The Last of the Wine
by DJ Clawson
Summary: Story 11 in my "Bit of Advice" series. The year is 1834, and Edmund Bingley has some news to shake up family life once again for the Darcy and Bingley families. Final story.
1. Prologue

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order. Or go visit my forum for links, extra stories, and other goodies:

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

Summary up to this point: The year is 1834. Geoffrey Darcy and Georgiana Bingley are married and have three children (Alison, William, and Brian). Eliza Bingley is married to Matthew Turner. Dr. George Wickham III is married to Cynthia Turner. Edmund Bingley is married, and Charles Bingley is not for reasons that came out in the last story. Only the oldest Darcy sister, Anne, is married. The old cast is pretty old, but still alive. At the end of story 10, Brian Darcy was born, so about two years have passed.

And now, our story...

* * *

Chapter 1 - Prologue

With his father's pen, in his father's study with the portrait of his grandfather never out his view, Charles Bingley the Third finished what was turning into a long correspondence with his sister. Elizabeth Turner (nee Bingley) was in Sussex with her husband and daughter, visiting Matthew Turner's cousins, with whom he was on very friendly terms. They stood godparents to the newborn girl, named Susan after Matthew's mother.

As delighted as he was to be an uncle many times over now, his joy was slightly diminished by the loss of his twin sister to marriage. Despite many years of being separated by a Continent, they remained the Bingley twins, and the loss was more acute than they were prepared for. They remedied this in letters and calls when she was Town (which was often). She was a happy bride, then wife, and maybe soon, mother. He was the stalwart bachelor, of some great fortune and good standing, having never been involved in a scandal with a woman or a gambling den, something he could say of few men he knew, even married ones. He was eight and twenty; sooner or later, he would probably marry, or so it was supposed, and he seemed to be openly considering the idea. He established himself as master of the Bingley house in London while his father remained in Derbyshire, he kept a packed social calendar, and he socialized in all the polite and approved ways with the opposite sex. There was even some possibility with a young woman he found to be amusing and intelligent until he met her married brother. With skill that only came with time and practice, he managed through the remainder of their acquaintance that evening without giving a single hint to either the woman or her sister-in-law that he already knew the brother, or had known him at least twice in a secret flat on the east side sometime in October. Charles couldn't remember the exact dates of their brief liaison, but suffice to say Richard never said he was married and it wouldn't have been shocking if he was. It wasn't a question one asked.

After many years of self-debasement and depression, Charles Bingley (the third) considered himself coming around, stumbling slowly towards what would probably be a marriage with a woman he didn't detest and hopefully children. He was decided in one thing, in that being an uncle was not enough, no matter how many times over.

He dipped the pen one last time to complete the letter, and sign his name as elaborately as he chose. It was actually his father's pen. He had his own, a beautiful wooden make from Florence that could be unwieldy. Charles Bingley the Second had a lifetime of correspondences and therefore a pen more suitable to prolonged use, and his son was grateful. He scratched his head with the back end of it was the servant powdered the letter, and the wax was still warm when there was a knock on the door.

The servant quickly left, and returned. "It's your brother, sir."

"Edmund?" As if he had another brother. Charles looked out the window at the pouring rain. "Send him in."

He put the letter and the pen aside and stood to greet his very unexpected little brother. To be fair, Edmund Bingley was always as tall as he was, but as he entered, sopping wet despite his outer layers already moved, he looked all the more shrunken. "Charles." He bowed with less contempt than he regularly did when they were alone.

"Edmund." He decided to soften his tone and gestured for the servant, who was making the liquor ready, to leave them. Only when the other man was gone and the door closed did he continue. "What brings you to grace me with your presence?" Because Edmund didn't, unless he had to. It occurred to Charles that he was the only one in Town besides Frederick and Heather Maddox that Edmund might see fit to run to.

Still, Edmund did not have the look about him of a man coming with news of death or illness. Being wet made his quiet fury seem sadder than he would have liked, but he wasn't mad at Charles. He accepted a glass of wine, drank the whole of it, and set it down before speaking. "My wife is with child."

Charles was astute enough to say, "Whose is it?"

"My manservant's." But the rage on Edmund's face couldn't find focus, and he tapped his fingers nervously on the arm of the chair. "Don't judge me."

"I haven't," he said, and it was truth. He wasn't overwhelmingly shocked, but he wasn't pleased with the news, either. He knew little of Lucy Bingley, having cut most of his contacts with Edmund prior to her entering the picture. "I'm sorry."

"She wants a divorce. And a settlement."

"Divorce?" He couldn't help himself but to smile at the absurdity of it. "Is she in love with him or something?"

"I don't know. I don't care. All I know is that she hates me and if she has to suffer through the dissolution of this marriage, she should be compensated for it. She said so."

"When?"

"About an hour ago. Maybe less."

Charles refilled his brother's wine glass, then his own. "Do you want to tell me how this came about or do you just want my advice based on my limited understanding of the matter?"

Edmund squirmed. "I will take your advice. Please – for the moment, spare me."

Edmund Bingley was not a person who asked to be spared. The younger son, he was always out to prove himself, and he had. He was an extremely successful businessman who landed himself a very pretty bride and made every appearance of being happy. Charles knew it was serious – more than it already was, of course. "Try for an annulment first."

"I will not declare myself impotent," Edmund seethed. It was his only way, after three years of marriage, to escape with only an annulment unless he could somehow prove they were secretly related. They had no children, so there were grounds for it, if he chose that route. "If I may emerge with only one thing intact, let it be that part of my dignity."

Charles could not be anything but sympathetic. "Fair enough. I assume she isn't concerned with being a divorced woman."

"No, it doesn't seem to bother her."

Of course, because she would either marry her lover or be rich enough to have her choice of someone else. She would probably go abroad to do it. "If she is willing to confess to the fatherhood and agree to a divorce, the only obstacles I see are time and money. How far is she along?"

"Three months. So I have six to divorce her." Or the child was his by law, and divorce almost impossible. He laughed painfully. "At least Parliament is in session. Shame I don't know anyone on it."

"I do."

"Really?"

Now it was his turn to be uncomfortable. "Not publicly." Meaning, there was at least one sodomite in the House of Lords. "Is that what you're here for?"

"I have nowhere else to go." He said it with such honestly, such desperation, that it could only be true. Edmund Bingley was unwelcome in the home he'd so proudly made for himself. For a fleeting moment he was not the one with the air of deserved moral superiority; he was the scared little brother. "I know that we've had troubles – "

"We've each been the architects of our own personal disasters, it seems," Charles said, waving it off. "Do you want me to tell anyone why you're here?"

"Not yet. Not – well, at least not until tomorrow. Let me sleep on it."

Because Charles was master of the house in London, when their father wasn't there. He was in command, an odd realization. "Provided she doesn't go about announcing it, which I don't think is in her best interests, you can have as long as you like."

He called for his butler and told him to open Edmund's old room and leave them again. Edmund drank. His voice was hoarse; perhaps he had been yelling in the afternoon previous. After a few glasses, he was willing to talk anyway, and forgetting that he despised his deviant older brother, he let the tale unravel of how his marriage came apart.

"I loved her – I think I did. She says that I don't know what it means. For awhile it was good. I – I assumed everything was well, even though she wasn't with child. She said she didn't want to be so ... I held myself back. Then she said I didn't pay attention to her. Then I was annoying her." He shook his head. "I don't understand."

_You never really loved her_, Charles thought._ You were just in love. So you married_. Because Edmund went headlong into everything, because it was always a race to him, to establish himself. "There is a difference between being fancying a woman and being in love."

"How would you know?" Edmund said, his voice slurred, so Charles allowed it.

"Because I was in love," he said. "And even when I wanted it to fade, it didn't. It never has." He searched for another alternative, and went from meaningless but physically fulfilling affair to another, but he could never leave Guy behind. "But it's a far less public shame, when it fall apart."

"Because you've been lucky."

He had to admit it. "I have." He would not give much to be in Edmund's place, attached to a woman who hated him, and probably had for a long time. It was a rushed arrangement that didn't develop into what it should have, which was a marriage. Edmund's – and his, by association – good name would be dragged through the mud as a cuckold and he would have trouble remarrying, whenever he was capable of it. Thank G-d Eliza was married already.

"I wanted it all to go _well_." Edmund shook his fist in fury.

"From my very jaded perspective, there is more to life than things _going well_. Even happy marriages don't _go well_, from one pleasant event to another. Georgie and Geoffrey couldn't be more destined for each other, and yet they had their own hardships." He added, "He almost lost her, after the stillbirth. He told me how sick she really was well after the fact, after William was born."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did he tell you?"

He tried to recall the circumstances of the conversation. "He had some notion of showing empathy for my situation, I suppose. He was sort of ashamed. Don't tell him I told you. And certainly don't tell Georgiana."

Edmund shook his head. "I may be foolish, but not enough to get my head cut off."

They shared a laugh at Georgiana's expense. All things considered, she probably would have given it willingly.

"Come," Charles said as he rose. "Let us end on a happy note, because you're going to wake up with a headache and be even more dour than you usually are, and I must prepare myself for it."

"You were – you were always more like Father," Edmund said as he took the offered hand to help him up.

"How do you mean?"

"You know how to smile at anything."

Though he could not bring himself to commit to a full agreement, Charles accepted the compliment anyway.

...Next Chapter - Waking in the Night


	2. Waking in the Night

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order. Or go visit my forum for links, extra stories, and other goodies:

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

NOTE: **If you registered, and have not been approved**, you have to email me at dj_clawson at yahoo dot com so that I know you're not a spammer and give me your username.

And now, our story...

* * *

Chapter 2 - Waking in the Night

George Wickham – alternately Junior or the Third, depending on one's perspective – stayed still as he felt the movement beside him. He remained so as Cynthia left, then returned. "Sorry to wake you."

He had to be honest. She was worth too much to him. "I wasn't sleeping."

"You don't have to stay in bed, if you really can't sleep. I'm barely in it anyway."

"'s fine."

She grumbled, not in a particularly fine mood herself, and turned over. George rolled on his side and kissed her shoulder, but could not bring himself to commit more than that. She felt ill, and for different reasons, he felt ill, and she did not want to discuss it.

But he did want to discuss it. He wanted to comfort her, and tell her that everything would be all right – unlike the miscarriage. This time it would be fine. He wanted to do the husbandly thing and assure her, and make a promise he couldn't necessarily keep because it was out of his control. He was enough of a doctor to know that. And she might express concern for him, but he didn't want that. He could not tell if his recent bout of insomnia was at all related to her condition, but he didn't want her to think it was. Instead he lay beside her and tried to sleep.

It must have been noticeable – a sharp contrast to the happy first months of his marriage – for Geoffrey Darcy to say something. He was in Town for some investment-related meetings, and they invited him over as soon as he appeared, fresh off the new train from Liverpool, and like an overeager child in Christmas about it.

"It was incredible," Geoffrey said between mouthfuls. "Mind you, it was noisy, I nearly fell off, and I felt sick the whole time and for a solid hour afterwards. But to be in London in hours and not days! You have no idea, man!"

"You don't seem so sick now," Cynthia Wickham said with amusement.

"As long as he doesn't think about the ride home," George said. "On that monstrous machine."

"You sound like my father. Have some courage," Geoffrey said.

"How is Mrs. Darcy?" Cynthia said, changing the subject.

"Fine, fine – very well. Very busy with Brian, now that he's walking. Not very much, mind you – he'll still sort of grab things as he goes, but he's much harder to keep track of. Oh, and William – I swear, he did say this, when I said I was going to Town. He asked for his Cousin Wickham."

George grinned. "Did he?"

"He then said, 'Does he have a present for me?' Where he got the notion, I have no idea. Maybe Alison put him up to it." William had claim, of course, as George's godson, to a present every time he saw him, and he seemed at two to be aware of the pattern. "He said it without batting an eye. Because Georgie wasn't in the room, of course."

"Of course."

Cynthia wasn't feeling well, so the after-dinner card game was brief before she retired and they moved to George's study, where he always had exceptionally good whiskey.

"Congratulations," Geoffrey said, and touched his glass to George's. "Concerning your wife, of course."

George hadn't said anything. It was too early and they were too nervous. "You could tell?"

"I'm familiar with the early signs of a child," Geoffrey said with a roll of his eyes. "Is she well?"

"She's well."

"Is she better than you?"

"Don't push it."

"George, I'm exhausted, I'm still dizzy from the train, and I've had three more drinks this evening than I should have had. I'm not in a position to lie to you and say you look the same as you did at Christmas."

George looked down at his drink.

"Mrs. Wickham I will excuse. You, on the other hand, are not with child."

"I do not need another person criticizing my health."

He must have said it with a little too much vehemence, because Geoffrey did not immediately respond, and when he did, his voice was considerably softened. "If I may – "

"You may not offer me marital advice."

Geoffrey frowned, and looked around the room, as if the titles of the books would help him. Finally he smiled and said, "I am far overstepping my boundaries here, but allow me to presume that Georgie is keen on the idea and invites you to Lancashire."

"What?"

"Have I fallen into Japanese? Because I do that sometimes to answer the children," Geoffrey said. "You should come to Lancashire. Mrs. Wickham's never been, has she? And you're not the most sought-after doctor in England yet, so surely you can find some time in your schedule. We'd love to have you. I know _William_ will certainly want you there."

"You're serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" He added, "And you are not required to come by train."

Geoffrey stayed only two days in London before returning to the north, after which he sent a letter confirming that Georgiana thought it was a wonderful idea and they ought to come up and enjoy the fine spring weather as soon as possible. "So we've been invited to Lancashire. We should be honored," George said, after reading his wife the letter.

"What is special about Lancashire?"

"They don't invite people often. It's _their_ hideaway – when they want to be away from Pemberley and their parents and siblings. And it is quite lovely. I was there twice, if only briefly. Very secluded. Wonderful walking paths in the woods."

Cynthia looked up nervously. "And we won't be intruding?" She wasn't on as friendly terms with Georgiana Darcy as she was with Isabel Franklin or other female relatives of George. There was no animosity between them, and he explained to her many times that Georgie acted around women in a manner that could be interpreted as cold, but was not meant to be. Nonetheless, she had never truly seen Georgie with her guard down.

"They would not feel the obligation to invite us if they did not want us there." George knew, in the back of his head where rationality managed to survive, that the trip would be good for him. "We'll get out of Town for a few weeks, away from all of this smog and noises all night. That is, if you feel up to traveling."

"You're the doctor."

"I'm not the sort of doctor who shuts women up for nine months and you know it," he said, managing a smile, and she agreed to the plan.

*******************************************

They did not leave immediately. Cynthia wanted to wait until the worst of her early symptoms were over, and George had appointments that he did not want to cancel. Nonetheless the idea of a holiday in the north buoyed both of their spirits, which kept them together through the long nights of sleeplessness. She would doze between bouts of illness, and he would read by the candlelight on his side of the bed, sometimes to her.

It was through Isabel that they heard something suspicious was up at the Bingley house, and George withstood three days of Cynthia's nudging before he agreed to pay call to his cousin Charles, and find Edmund Bingley there, though he was out for the day and had no set time for his return. Charles greeted George with his usual good-natured openness, but even he was not willing to let the details flow freely about Edmund's situation. "He is separated from his wife."

"Is it serious?"

Charles just nodded.

"Does he plan to tell the family?"

"When he has to. Which will be soon – Father's due next week for some company business. Then everyone will know and you'll undoubtedly hear it from however far away you are at the time."

"I don't know Mrs. Bingley very well," George said. "They were married while I was in France, and then I was married, so we never really crossed paths. And they went to her family for Christmas."

"Yes."

That was all Charles would give him, and George thanked him for his time. He returned home only to discover his wife's diggings were far more successful, in the form of a letter from Eliza Turner, which she would not allow him to read but spelled out for him in one word, "Divorce."

"Impossible. Edmund would never spend that kind of money on something that doesn't make money. And he'll never be married again."

"It's what she said," Cynthia defended. "Charles knows someone in Parliament who can submit the bill."

"Then it must be mutual, for them to even try it. They have no children; you would think he would just get an annulment."

"Unless she's with child."

And, presumably, not by Edmund Bingley. Yes, it did make sense. Edmund would want to divorce her before she gave birth, and not have to take responsibility for the child as if it were his. George shook his head. "He deserves better."

"To be blunt," and Cynthia always was, which was what he loved about her, "you are not as close with Edmund as you are with your other Bingley cousins."

"I'm not, but that doesn't make him any less of a cousin. He's family, and that's that. If he comes soliciting for funds, I'll be shocked that he hasn't tapped someone with more money, but I'll still give him something."

"How do you know he's not in the wrong?"

"They're probably both in the wrong in some fashion beyond our understanding," he said. "That doesn't mean I don't support my cousin in what must be a terrible time for him."

"Families have disowned each other for less."

"Not our family," George said, and squeezed her hand.

*******************************************

George and Cynthia Wickham made their slow, horse-drawn carriage way up to Lancashire. Three days later they arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Darcy the younger and their three children, a house gifted to them by Geoffrey's parents as a wedding present.

"Cousin Wickham!"

"Master William! Come back here right now!"

Their approach had slowed enough to hear outside the carriage, and George opened the door as the carriage stopped to greet his overeager godson, who managed to avoid his Nurse and ran barefoot in the grass, wearing a blue kimono instead of a toddler's dress. His hair was wild and his hands were already dirty as he reached out to grab his favorite cousin and godfather.

"Somehow I knew you were on pins and needles for our arrival," George said, and extended a hand to help his wife out of the carriage as the footman scrambled to help them. William further ducked away from Nurse by grabbing George's legs and hiding behind them.

"William!" There was one voice, however, that could make the little boy visibly tremble as he stuck his hand in his mouth and looked up at his cousins. Georgiana Darcy (nee Bingley) was fast behind him, though not so much in a run because her dress did not permit it and she was carrying her younger son. Brian Darcy, now past his first birthday, clung to his mother's side. "What did I say about running without shoes?"

George smiled. "No harm done." He bowed. "Mrs. Darcy."

"Dr. Wickham. Mrs. Wickham. Welcome to our home. My husband will be along shortly." She curtseyed and nodded to Cynthia Wickham. "Brian, do you have anything to say to our distinguished guests?"

Brian smiled, but only buried his face in her shoulder. "He's not really talking yet," she explained. "Fortunately the other children do their share."

"Cousin Wickham, do you have candy?"

He looked down at his godson. "Candy will ruin your teeth."

"Cousin Wickham does not have everything you want," Geoffrey Darcy said, announcing his presence. Alison tagged behind him. "George. Mrs. Wickham."

"Mr. Darcy. Miss Darcy."

Alison curtseyed. "Dr. Wickham. Mrs. Wickham."

They could finally proceed down the last stretch of land before the entrance to the house itself, which was no great estate but was a fine enough country house for a family. "Welcome to Lancashire, Mrs. Wickham," Geoffrey said as the servants took their coats. "I trust the ride was at least bearable."

"Did you ride the train?" Alison interrupted, but neither parent reproached her for it.

"I'm not quite that courageous," George said.

"It was pleasant to see the country," Cynthia added. "Not have it go rushing by."

William was eventually successfully convinced that he was not to be showered with presents anytime before they were unpacked, and taken with his brother and sister back to the Nursery so the adults could relax and the Wickhams could refresh themselves after their journey. Cynthia ate ravenously as George sipped his tea and imparted what little news from London he had to impart. "I'm afraid we're not in the right circles."

"I knew something was wrong when Edmund was living at home with Charles," Georgie said, not mincing words. "So I wrote him – Edmund that is – and he told me about the divorce. Wasn't interested in a lengthy explanation."

"Who would be?" Geoffrey said. "Well, by now everyone knows. We've just escaped a bit of it, being up north, and we might as well stay up here if it gets published."

"If he goes through with it and submits the papers, it will be published," George said.

"Unfortunately we are lack a scandalous king to distract the Ton," Georgie said, "but I'm sure they'll lose interest, especially with the Season in swing. And next year he'll have to endure being an eligible bachelor again."

"And we wouldn't wish that on anyone," Geoffrey added. "Would we, George?"

George grimaced and looked down at his tea.

After a brief tour of the house, the Wickhams were shown to their chambers, where their trunks were unpacked and they could retire before dinner, still a few hours away. Cynthia didn't let her movement betray it, but her eyes looked weary, as if the road was catching up on her all at once, and as soon as she was out of her corset she collapsed on the bed.

"Do you want some tea? Or do you just want to sleep?"

"I just want to not _move_ for awhile," she replied as George sat beside her and stroked her hair. "If that is acceptable to you."

He put his feet up. "That is very acceptable to me." But nonetheless he did not sleep, or want to. That still eluded him.

*******************************************

Dinner was a thankfully brief affair, not drawn out like Cynthia Wickham expected. There were too many distractions from the children, who ate separately but ran freely about the house by the adult's meal time. Brian Darcy still needed the constant attention of his mother, which incited the ire of a jealous William, who was put in line by his loving but authoritative sister Alison. As no real emotions were being harmed, the master of the house mostly watched with amusement. All of the activity called for an early retirement after a few rounds of cards. The library was not astounding as she was told the Pemberley library was, but its selection was unique, containing many books on the far east and many in Eastern languages.

George took a book on Chinese poetry, but was only a few pages into it when, to Cynthia's surprise, he fell asleep, the book still on his chest. She removed it for him and put out the candle on his side of the bed.

Cynthia turned on her side and drifted off. She was not surprised to be woken by George's startled movements, for which he was deeply apologetic, but he was still shivering when he settled back down and she draped an arm around him, an action he didn't always let her take. She did not ask what phantoms were tormenting her husband. Sometimes she did, and he even on occasion told her, but they were not something he could talk about, however fantastical his worries were. He was not always like this; she suspected the miscarriage set it off, and he was already better. He would admit to neither. He had his pride and his defenses, both of which could not be easily conquered, even by his wife. After nearly two years of marriage she told herself she knew sometimes it was a battle to fight and sometimes it was something to let pass on its own.

He woke only one more time, and then finally settled. She could not find rest herself as the sky turned from black to blue. Her stomach was uneasy for reasons that did not involve George (at the moment).

"Ring for tea," George said, announcing that he was awake, if still positioned the same as she rose. "They won't mind."

"I might go for a walk around the house."

"Do you want me to come?" He did not sound much like he wanted to go as much as he wanted to reassure her.

She smiled. "No. I'll be fine."

He did not protest, and she quickly put on a gown and coat against the morning chill and made for the kitchen. Sure enough, the cook was up and the fire was lit despite the darkness clinging to the sky, and there was plenty of ginger on hand for her tea. She sat at the long and empty table, not set for the morning yet.

"_Oi, Okaasan_, I want to go with you!"

"Not today. Go back to sleep!" In the hallway, Georgiana Darcy said something else, but it wasn't English, and William scuttled back up the stairs. She emerged from the darkness, and it was easy to see why Cynthia hadn't recognized her silhouette. She was wearing what looked like some odd Oriental version of men's clothing and was barefoot. Her hair was always too short to style, but it was not brushed. "Good morning, Mrs. Wickham."

"Mrs. Darcy."

A servant appeared with a hot cup of coffee, which Georgiana swallowed in a single gulp. "I'm going for a walk. Would you like to join me?"

This early? But if Mrs. Darcy thought it was safe, it probably was. "I will."

The servant at the door fetched not only a heavy cloak and bonnet for Mrs. Wickham but shoes (sandals, more accurately) for Mrs. Darcy and another item that she slung over her shoulder. When they stepped outside and into better light, it was revealed to be a sword.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Georgie smiled. "You mean, does my husband know about this?"

Cynthia blushed.

"The answer is he's deaf, not blind." She ignored the doorman's offer of a cloak and began down the path into the woods, and Cynthia had to rush to catch up with her. "Though when I left him just now he was still asleep. I cannot say I do not occasionally take advantage of my husband's auditory deficiency."

"My husband says he was injured when he was younger."

"He fired a rifle with it pressed against his ear," Georgie explained, deftly moving around the muddy patches on the trail. Cynthia did her best to mimic her movements. "It ruined one side and some of the other, but it saved my life. Really I should be more grateful, but the rescue was mutual."

"Gypsies?"

"A Spencean Radical with poor judgment about whom he chose to incite," she replied. "George was there – he can tell you about it."

"I'm trying to be polite."

"If you never discuss bad things, that makes for some terribly uninteresting conversations. But no, I suppose, it's not very _polite_ in the way we're supposed to be polite."

Cynthia smiled. Georgie met George's description. In many ways she was like him, speaking the obvious and the painful truth even when it was better left unsaid, but she was daring about it. "My husband is not always very polite, however much he tries to be."

"If he tried all the time, he would never say anything."

It was not right to laugh, but Cynthia did anyway, as queasy as it made her feel. "You have an advantage of knowing my husband longer."

"But not necessarily _better_," Georgie said, stopping in front of a small waterfall. "I have known him since his father died, yes. I'm told I met him before that, but I've no memory of it. I remember the day his father died and then the funeral, and George came from Newcastle for it and the only thing I remember of that day was thinking jealously of how much taller he was. It wasn't until I went out and he was old enough to travel on his own that we saw more of each other. Mrs. Bradley isn't close to my mother."

"They're sisters."

"Not all sisters are close." Georgie paused, but didn't say whatever was on her mind, likely concerning her own sister, who was now Cynthia's sister-in-law. It struck Cynthia that the two of them couldn't be more different, but she didn't say that to Georgiana, who recovered quickly. "George is, as you know, very close to Uncle Darcy, so he would come up in the summer or for a holiday or whatnot, and Geoffrey would be terribly jealous because George was older and got to drink and know all kinds of things we weren't permitted to know yet. George got to go to White's first, he got to go to Cambridge first. We were young and we didn't understand how lucky we were in our own families, even if we thought we did." Georgie leapt right up onto the rock overlooking the little pool of water. "I was thinking of letting the children swim here this summer, but the water isn't clear enough for me to decide. I've been putting it off."

Cynthia peered into the water, which was hardly crystal. "You are asking a girl from Town, I'm afraid."

"I'll see what grows here when it gets hot." She jumped off, landing next to Cynthia, and they continued their walk. "If it means anything to you, George was always the responsible one. He was left out of anything we really wanted to do but shouldn't have, which meant he found out and joined us anyway, scowling with disapproval the whole time, but we needed him there. There had to be the voice of reason, even if you didn't listen to him."

Cynthia could imagine a younger George doing everything Georgiana described, and for a moment the tormented adult as of late was forgotten. He was never carefree, but he could be amusingly flustered. Could she imagine him around children – _his_ children?

The idea quite literally made her head spin, and she fumbled for something to stabilize her, which ended up being Georgiana's shoulder, and the other woman guided her to a fallen tree that made an excellent bench. "Excuse me." She did not want to be sick in front of her host, in the middle of a forest and far from someone to help them, so she bit her lip so hard it brought tears, which she wiped away.

After a long silence, Georgiana said, "I've been thinking about Geoffrey's uncle, Mr. Grégoire. He never preaches his Papistry to us – in fact, very much the opposite – but there is perhaps something to be said for the Virgin Mary."

Cynthia swallowed and looked up.

"It seems to me as though every religion has some sort of holy mother, or fertility goddess, for men to respect and moon over a bit and women to seek out when they need a guiding spirit. And thanks to Henry the Eighth and Martin Luther, we just have the local vicar, and I've not yet met one who was particularly sensitive towards the entire conception of womanhood, except in the necessities of telling us to behave and procreate." Georgie added, "I was terrified the first time I was with child. I was young, I was not on the best of terms with my mother, and I wasn't married. Being married was supposed to fix everything in the eyes of G-d, as if the wedding wasn't stressful enough no matter how much I loved my husband. I was so sick I barely made it through the ceremony. I don't know how he put up with me."

"I didn't know – "

"Of course, George wouldn't tell you that Alison was born barely eight months after we married," she said. "Because he's _polite_. And Alison's old enough to understand something of it, so now it's never discussed, but there was no one at the church that morning who didn't know why Geoffrey Darcy was marrying with three months left to his University term and a week's notice. Before I'd never cared what people thought of me, but that morning I was ashamed. My mother never said a harsh word about it, but I needed more than that. I wasn't very religious, but it would have been nice to have someone to pray to whom I knew didn't disapprove." She smiled. "But in the end it was all right, because Geoffrey was happy for me and he was the only one I really cared about before Alison was born. He would have made all of my pain and fear go away if he could have. He probably felt terrible that he couldn't." She added, "What I'm saying is, if George isn't supporting you now, I will beat him so hard into the ground he'll have to dig himself out."

Cynthia grinned. "He is. He doesn't let his own problems distract him."

"Good." She offered a hand, which Cynthia took, and helped her to her feet. "Because it's been awhile since I hit someone and I may be rusty."

...Next Chapter - The Legend of the Wolf


	3. The Legend of the Wolf

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order. Or go visit my forum for links, extra stories, and other goodies:

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

NOTE: **If you registered, and have not been approved**, you have to email me at dj_clawson at yahoo dot com so that I know you're not a spammer and give me your username.

And now, our story...

* * *

Chapter 3 - The Legend of the Wolf

It was clear that the Darcys did not keep a traditional household. Mealtimes weren't set, children were frequently at the table or at least under it, and one of their hosts was often missing for an earlier meal. Georgiana Darcy was taking care of Brian and not at breakfast; Geoffrey excused himself to chase after William, who had made off with an entire plate of cinnamon buns and was carrying them as fast as his little legs could take him. As soon as he was gone, Alison made for her father's seat at the table, and assumed it with a posture of presumed authority. She even took a sip of his coffee, and nearly choked on it, but was good enough not to spit it out however much she looked like she wanted to. "It's so bitter. Why does he drink it?"

"I believe the more important question is why did you drink it, Miss Darcy?" Cynthia said, and looked to her husband, who hid his grin behind the paper.

"I don't like milk. I drink so much of it, and Papa says I can't have ale until I'm older, and Mama says too much juice makes me too wild, and she only drinks tea in the morning and it's _really _foul and I drank it once and she was terribly upset and I couldn't play any instruments for a whole week."

"Would you prefer if your parents came into your room and drank everything and ate your food? Or would you be cross?"

"But they _wouldn't_."

"That's why it's a theoretical question," George said, "and you must answer it all the same."

Alison grumbled, "When I have my own house I'm going to let everyone eat and drink whatever they want."

"And have fat, drunken children about? I think not, Miss Darcy," George replied. "You will feel differently when the time comes, I assure you."

Alison did not have a proper answer to that. Instead she took a muffin, curtseyed, and left. Only then did Cynthia let her laughter escape.

"I take it your walk was enjoyable."

"Mrs. Darcy showed me the path into the woods, though that was far less interesting than what she said about you."

"What did she say about me?"

"That you were an authoritative child who was always telling them they were in the wrong."

George swallowed his tea and said, "That does sound like me."

"She also mentioned your cousin's fight with a Radical where he lost his hearing. She said she was there."

"Did she mention she was dressed up as a wolf at the time?"

"Be serious!"

"When am I not?"

He had a point. He was in a good mood after a fair amount of rest, because as Georgiana entered with Brian on her hip, he said, "Mrs. Darcy, will you settle something for us?"

Georgiana stood next to him, and Brian grabbed a lock of George's hair, which she stopped before he could tug too hard. "I would hardly want to stand between marital discard and harmony."

"Were you wearing a wolf costume when you fought the Spencean Radical?"

She answered without flinching, "It was a wolf-_man_ costume, to be precise. Brian, no!" She removed the offending arm, which was still trying to pluck hairs from his cousin's head, but kissed her son when he looked as though he was about to frown. "I must put you somewhere where you have plenty of things to grab that are not attached to people."

"He's not bothering me," George said. George was excessively kind to two types of people – children and patients.

Nonetheless Georgiana eventually put her son on the floor with a blanket and toys. He made sounds, but none of them were words.

Georgiana answered the unasked question. "I didn't speak until I was two, and even then, I spoke only to Geoffrey until I was three."

"Why?"

She looked at Cynthia. "I have no idea, but it was quite a shock to my mother. She swooned right in front of me. It's perhaps the first thing I remember."

Geoffrey eventually found his elder son and what remained of the sticky buns in the attic, beneath an overturned trunk. William was hard to control for the rest of the day, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief when he finally collapsed in his mother's arms and she carried him to bed.

That night, George Wickham slept like the dead, not waking even when she did. He kept all of his recipes for her morning sickness by the bed, some of which occasionally worked, and she succeeded in returning to his side and dozing until the sun was full in the sky. She opened her eyes at last when she heard water splashing, and turned over. He was washing his face. "Good morning."

She smiled. "Good morning."

He sat down next to her. "How are you? Do you wish me to fetch you something?"

"No. Just don't rise yet. A few more minutes."_ With you_.

He leaned over and kissed her. "You may have more than a few minutes, if you wish."

She confessed that she did.

*******************************************

"Dr. and Mrs. Wickham are in Lancashire," Fitzwilliam Darcy announced, without looking up from the letter. His wife and daughters watched him from across the breakfast table. "Geoffrey invited them for a few weeks."

Elizabeth Darcy sipped her tea. "Are they planning on coming to Pemberley?"

"They've not decided. Or so our son informs us." He put the letter aside.

"There's nothing to do in Lancashire," Cassandra Darcy said.

"That's precisely the point," Elizabeth replied. "They live in Town all year; a few weeks in the country would be good for them."

"As opposed to too many weeks in the country," Cassandra grumbled.

Darcy looked at his wife, but said nothing. Sarah Darcy opened her mouth, then shut it again with a look from her father, and conversation continued, albeit in a different direction, towards everyone's plans for the day.

There was a call on Kirkland, where Bingley's Indian flowers were in full bloom. Originally planted for the wedding of his daughters, they now ran wild across the fields, and were too colorful for anyone to have the heart to uproot them. More importantly, the grandchildren loved running through them, so they remained.

"I would treat it as good news," Bingley said from his new chair in the study, one that swiveled to his delight and Darcy's annoyance. "About George and Mrs. Wickham, that is."

"Yes."

"Darcy, you have to try this chair."

"No."

"Well, I can see you're in no mood to be pleasant." Not that it put Bingley off in the least. He merely stopped spinning around and let Monkey climb into his lap. Darcy just stared out the window, watching Elizabeth and Jane take a walk through the meadow. "And here I was, supposing you might brighten up my day."

"Are you intending to patronize me all morning?"

"If I can help it."

Darcy finally cracked a little smirk, and turned to Bingley, and the mounds of papers on the desk. "I am afraid I have very little advice to offer you. I'm not experienced in these matters."

"You can say it. _Divorce_." Bingley stroked Monkey's back, making the tiny primate coo. "I confess I am now mildly upset I did not involve myself in matters of politics, for I feel entirely unable to help my son."

"Your brother-in-law is a knight."

"Dr. Maddox is perhaps the _least_ political member of the peerage, if such a thing can be said."

"Surely he has friends in Parliament."

"He has friends who happen to _be_ in Parliament; of that I'm sure. Yet I can't bring myself to ask him to press them, as I know he would despise it. Edmund is free to ask himself. Or he'll have to do it the simple way, with money."

"He will recover from this."

"You mean financially or emotionally?"

"I mean both."

Bingley smiled. "And I suppose I ought to count my blessings; both my daughters are already married, and Charles stands to inherit enough of a fortune that this scandal won't be too much of a distraction, should he ever decide to shed his bachelor title."

"Yes, there is Charles."

"A young man of taste who seems to have little affection for the ladies of the Ton and a vast inheritance – I cannot think of why anyone like that would linger in an unmarried state..."

"_Bingley_."

"Of course, this is about my other son, the one in over his head. I should stay focused." But he was still smiling. "What do you think, Monkey?"

"I don't care what that rat thinks."

"Rats are not primates. It's another species entirely and you know it." Bingely scratched Monkey behind his ears and was rewarded with a little squeal. "Come now, Darcy. We can't both be morose over different things at the same time. Is Cassandra still upset with you?"

Darcy sighed. "I suspect she will be until I let her return to Town."

"You cannot blame a girl of one and twenty for an independent streak." But it was more than an independent streak; Cassandra was confined to the north until the latest situation blew over and the would-be suitor set his eye on another lady. Though she had so far remained entirely within the bounds of propriety, Cassandra's eager flirting won over a few more hearts than she could handle, and none of them belonged to men her father approved of. His serious demeanor railed against her flippant attitude a few too many times as of late, and she made that clear to everyone around her. Fortunately Elizabeth was there to stand between them, as Sarah Darcy stuck her nose up at the entire process. "You have one daughter deemed too eager to marry and one daughter who doesn't want to marry at all. And a third who is – the entire spectrum, if you would."

Darcy rolled his eyes. "I am truly blessed."

*******************************************

Jane Bingley held the letter so tight in her hands, her sister Elizabeth thought it might tear, but said nothing. "I wish Charles would consider Town. I would wish to be with Edmund."

Elizabeth frowned. "He's refused you for propriety's sake? Are you still married to Mr. Bingley and not some imposter?"

It succeeded in getting Jane to smile. "He did not _refuse_ me. We discussed it and reached the conclusion that we could do little for him in Town, and that that he does not want the attention. Edmund was never a boy who liked to be coddled, even by his mother."

"If Edmund manages the divorce, he will likely come to Derbyshire to escape as soon as he is available to do so, and then you will have him to comfort." Elizabeth took her sister's hand and squeezed it. "Charles is with him and Eliza and Mr. Turner are returning to Town soon. And if we should wish to seek out the silver lining, he seems to have mended his bridges with his brother to have sought shelter with him."

"I always wished they were closer."

It was hard to watch Jane Bingley (nee Bennet) not think the best of everything and everyone, as accustomed to it as Elizabeth Darcy was. There were occasions of distress, but none of them recent, and none previously involving Edmund. He had somehow gone astray and his mother's heart went with it. He had not scraped his knee and she could not mend it. He was a man, and he made a mistake that was beyond their reach to mend, and even their husbands' reach. Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley's long years of building friendships based on family ties, business relations, and personal opinions instead of political advantage would do little for Edmund in Parliament. All they could offer him was money, and in typical Edmund Bingley fashion, he had refused to accept a shilling. It spoke well of his independence but poorly of his immediate financial future.

"The world is not as it once was," Elizabeth said. "Edmund is clever. He can survive in the world as a divorced man, and he will learn from this. He is young yet. My husband was foolish about women and their notions of marriage until he was nine and twenty."

Jane grinned. "Perhaps a little."

"You give him more credit than I do. There's the old Jane!" To which, her sister blushed. "I'd thought you had left me."

"Never."

*******************************************

Elizabeth found little time to confer with her husband. In a fleeting moment she hoped Edmund's situation would serve as a distraction for him, then felt ashamed at the thought that he might benefit from the Bingleys' distress. Darcy had been so quietly distraught since extricating Cassandra from her latest fling that it failed almost everyone's notice. After all of the success and happiness in their lives, living to see sons and daughters married well and grandchildren being born, disappointment was a heavy cross for him to bear. Elizabeth knew he was only disappointed in himself, and would not lay blame on Cassandra for not being serious enough about marriage (and perhaps Sarah for being too serious and rejecting the notion altogether, though she was wealthy enough to do so). He was even a bit hoarding in his assignment of blame, and would not speak to her as if she had any part in raising her own daughter or criticizing her current antics.

Elizabeth hardly thought herself beyond it; the very opposite, but Darcy took his daughters' welfare so seriously as to load it onto himself entirely. A social misstep, however unintentional, silly, or ultimately fleeting on Cassandra's part was entirely a parental failing of his, and in accordance with Darcy tradition, of massive proportions. It did not weigh easily on him, and he slept poorly. Even in their own distress, Jane and Bingley were a distraction that Elizabeth could not help but welcome, if just a little bit.

After dinner, Sarah played on the pianoforte for a while before they all retired. Elizabeth found Darcy in her chambers, already in bed and reading a letter.

"The Vicar of Lambton is ailing," he said, not looking up. "A doctor from London arrived this morning, but has not yet made a full assessment."

"That poor man." The vicar lived alone, his wife having left him years ago, and was approaching his eightieth year. He had a bad cough, and trouble flipping the pages at services, so this did not come as a surprise. "Shall we visit him?"

Darcy removed his spectacles and set them aside. "As I do not know if he will live until Sunday, it may be appropriate."

"Who wrote you? The curate?"

"Yes. He mentioned the living."

"Oh." So it was that serious. She climbed into bed beside him. "Will you answer him?"

"I do not need to; he mentioned that he would refuse it if it was offered. He wishes to return to Wales as soon as a replacement can be found, to be with his parents."

"So Lambton will need a new curate and a new Vicar."

"Yes."

"And you already loathe the idea of searching for one."

Darcy smiled, if just a little. "You give me little credit. I was hoping that someone else will find someone and I will merely nod my head at the appropriate time. I don't own Lambton."

"I would say it is a shame Joseph took a position, but I doubt he would venture so far from Hertfordshire for such a long period of time." Joseph Bennet, grandson of Mr. Bennet and current owner of Longbourn, was now a reverend and accepted a curate position not thirty miles from his ancestral home, rented to his stepfather. "Though it would be nice to see him more often."

"There is that train everyone's bragging about riding."

"I would have to see you there."

"You haven't even asked if I would ride it."

She smiled. "Do I have to ask?"

Darcy put his hand over hers, the first time they'd touched since the morning. "You know me too well. I confess it terrifies me."

"And you know me well enough to know that is something I would never repeat – not even to Jane."

"Who would tell Bingley, and he would never let me off about it."

"Precisely."

She giggled and he pulled her close and kissed her. For Elizabeth, that was enough.

*******************************************

"Do you think we should go to London?"

Charles Bingley the Second rolled over to face his wife. With their children all out of the house, they had only each other for company – and Monkey, who was now occasionally permitted in the bedchamber but only if he slept on a pillow on the floor and not on the furniture. "If you wish to go to London, we shall go to London."

"That was not what I asked."

He sighed. "I see no reason for a change in our position. I have no wish to crowd Edmund. If anything, Charles' letter only confirms that he wants to be alone, and his brother's company is more than enough. I will not overwhelm him."

"I miss him."

His voice was softened. "I miss him, too. And I would pay to bribe Parliament for three divorces to have him home and happy. But he is his own man – and I suspect we will see him home, and eventually happy, soon."

"Some men become cold when their heart is broken."

"Some men. Not Bingleys."

She giggled.

"Yes, we are prone to persuasion, and do not always make sound decisions concerning our health and wellbeing by stupidly traveling abroad with a maniac who thinks he's a Japanese knight, but one thing we do well is fall in love, repeatedly if it is required."

"Was I the first person with whom you fell in love?"

"Before meeting you, I would say I had been in love many times and was a bit fed up with the whole thing, or at least my sisters chiding me about it. But then I met you and I proved myself wrong." He kissed her hand. "Edmund will find someone who loves him, and to whom he can return the same sentiment, and I have no doubt that he will be shocked to discover what it is like."

"Charles! He's still married yet!"

"If I must think further ahead than a sensible person to be optimistic, then I will relinquish my title as a sensible person." He added, "As if I ever had it."

Jane was laughing too hard to disagree.

...Next Chapter - Sir Daniel


	4. Sir Daniel

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order. Or go visit my forum for links, extra stories, and other goodies:

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

NOTE: **If you registered, and have not been approved**, you have to email me at dj_clawson at yahoo dot com so that I know you're not a spammer and give me your username.

And now, our story...

* * *

Chapter 4 - Sir Daniel

"Have courage, young Frederick," Dr. Maddox said. "Great men have walked down these very corridors. I can't think of any as of late, but I'm sure that is only a function of my approaching senility."

Frederick Maddox looked up at his father as he held his arm and guided him through the halls outside the House of Lords. Officially Dr. Maddox had a servant specifically to help him around, but when he arrived in London so suddenly and said where he was going, Frederick insisted on accompanying him. His father was so rarely in Town now, living in Chesterton so he could still give and attend lectures at Cambridge. Daniel Maddox Jr. fluctuated between the two locations, often staying with his brother at his house instead of their father's townhouse if it was empty. Even though he was technically retired, their father had more of an actual occupation than either son. Frederick had no need of one and Danny took occasional translation jobs for the East Asian Society, but otherwise was incapacitated by his condition. Like his father, he took it in stride, and tutored his nephew Stewart.

"We have an appointment," Frederick told the doorman. "Sir Daniel Maddox to see Lord Elton."

"Of course." The man bowed. "Sir Daniel. Lord Elton will see you on the lawn. Sir, if you would come this way..."

Under the statue of Cromwell was a pleasant garden and a few benches. They were not seated long before being approached by a fairly fat man who could only be intending to address them. "Sir Daniel. No, please don't – "

But Dr. Maddox rose anyway, beating Frederick, and bowed. "Lord Elton. May I introduce my son Frederick?"

"Lord Elton."

He bowed. "Mr. Maddox." He turned to the doctor, who had previously only told Frederick that this was a former patient, as most men he knew were. "Doctor, if I may be so bold, you are the last person I expected to see strolling along this stretch of the Thames. To what do I owe the honor?"

"It's not much of an honor, I'm afraid," Dr. Maddox replied. "I am in need of your advice."

Lord Elton looked around, and seeing no one in earshot, continued, "You have it."

"My nephew, on my wife's side, is seeking a divorce."

Lord Elton frowned. "How long has he been married?"

"Three years."

"And his wife?"

"A confessed adulteress. She's compliant in the proceedings."

"That's a bit of luck, then. Not the sort of luck you would wish on yourself, but it makes things easier. Unfortunately, I cannot be of any direct help. I've never been much of a speaker, and if I present the bill I'll simply be laughed out of Westminster. Comes with being caught with a few ladies of suspicious characters in my career." He sighed. "If he wants the bill put forward by a more eloquent speaker, he will need someone younger and deeper in debt than myself, and then he will need someone else to second it, and at least a few more to shout in favor for good measure. I can draw up a list of names, and you can send them on to your nephew."

"I am deeply grateful, Lord Elton."

"I can hardly refuse a man I owe my very life," he said, and slapped Dr. Maddox on the arm. "Good to see you, Doctor."

"Lord Elton."

After he was gone, Frederick took his father's arm so they could begin the walk back to the carriage. "How did you save his life?"

"He is exaggerating. No one dies of a stubbed toe, no matter how painful it may seem at the time."

*******************************************

Lady Heather Maddox watched her husband leave his study, a more serious look on his face than usual. His father and his cousin Edmund were still inside. Frederick took Danielle from her and bounced his daughter in his lap. "My father is attempting to be supportive."

"If anyone could be, it's your father."

"Edmund has never taken advice well. He's stubborn."

"Most men are."

"I certainly am."

"You're humble enough to know your faults. Something Edmund is lacking."

Frederick tried to maintain a serious demeanor, but it was difficult with his daughter tugging on his side-whiskers. "Perhaps he'll learn a bit of humility when his good name is tied to a horse and dragged through the mud."

"To say nothing of what Lucy Bingley will experience." Before he could respond, she said, "Don't give me that look. She's at fault but Edmund's not blameless, and it will be easier for him to return to society than her."

"I suspect she has no intention of returning to society, with or without the child's father. She wants twenty thousand pounds."

"Twenty thousand pounds!" Heather lowered her voice. "Where did you hear that?"

"Where do you think? Charles. Now what else were you going to say in her defense?"

"_Frederick_. This is no time for gloating."

Danielle began to unravel Frederick's necktie, which he made no move to stop. "I am repeating what I heard. She wants twenty thousand or she'll fight the divorce, and her father has friends in Parliament." He finally let his grin show. "She's evil in a brilliant sort of way."

"Frederick!"

"Someone had to say it."

"No one _had_ to say it."

"I did. Now will someone please take our daughter while I still have some beard left?"

Heather kissed him as she picked up Danielle and passed her to Nurse. Tea was just being served to them as the door opened again, and Edmund emerged, looking tense and uncomfortable. He bowed. "Mr. Maddox. Lady Heather. Please excuse me."

Frederick rose to see him out and help his father out of the study and into the drawing room, giving him the armchair.

"I really should return to my own house and not rely - "

"Please stay, Dr. Maddox," Heather said. "There's no reason to be at your house alone. And you're staying for dinner anyway."

"I am?"

"We will resort to taunting you with the presence of grandchildren if we have to," Frederick said. "Though I think Danielle's just gone up for a nap."

"I should dictate a letter to your mother."

"After dinner. The post's gone for the day anyway."

"Yes, yes, I suppose that's true." Dr. Maddox was usually in good form for his age, but he looked tired, and not just from his travels. "Is Edmund gone?"

"We were going to invite him, but he ran out the door."

"As long as he has somewhere to go – he's with Charles. And Eliza and Mr. Turner may return to Town today, or tomorrow at the latest. Tossed from his own house. I can't imagine it." Dr. Maddox straightened his glasses. "Oh yes. I can imagine it, though I was much younger and the circumstances were different. I was wronged by my brother and not a wife."

"But you forgave Uncle Brian," Frederick said.

"Not for many years. And I didn't trust him for an additional few, but he was my brother, and I always loved him, even when I wanted, and still occasionally want to wring his neck. You don't divorce family, however much you might want to." He added, "I have every confidence that Edmund will get through this, and be the better for it. Now, where are the grandchildren I was promised?"

*******************************************

Considerably brightening to the mood at the Bingley house, which was positively dour, was the arrival of Matthew Turner and Eliza Turner (nee Bingley). She was ecstatic to see her brothers, and ran into Charles' arms before he even had time to acknowledge her or her husband. "Mr. Turner."

"Mr. Bingley." Matthew Turner, noticing the slower approach of Edmund around the corner, bowed again. "Mr. Edmund."

"Edmund!" Eliza did not show any less enthusiasm for her younger brother, though he was more reluctant to welcome her embrace, and slower to release it.

"Eliza," he said, his eyes watery. "You didn't have to come."

"I am not of that opinion, so thank goodness it was not for you to decide."

After some brief conversation, the exhausted travelers were shown to their chambers, renovated versions of Eliza's old rooms. There would be time for the more painful conversations later.

"What did you think of my brother?" Eliza said as her husband removed his vest. She did not have to specify.

"He looked better than I thought he'd be."

"He is thinner."

"Perhaps." He added, "There is at least the fact that he has reconciled with Charles, which I understand to be a small miracle."

She brightened. "There is that." She'd never told her husband _why _her brothers were barely on speaking terms, and he knew her well enough not to ask.

There was time before dinner for her to corner Edmund in the study, where he was almost his old self in that he was doing what he loved, working feverishly over a pile of papers. He stood at her entrance. "Eliza." He was thinner – _too_ thin – and frightened. His beard, however short and fashionable, made him look older than he was. "How are you?"

"Worried sick. And don't begin to complain that I ought to know better, because I will always worry about my baby brother."

He smiled a little, and sat with her on the other side of the desk. "To be honest, I am surprised Father has honored my request not to come."

"He could help you."

"Very little. I did write Uncle Maddox and he did come, just yesterday."

"That's wonderful. Did he have any news?"

"He has more political contacts than he cares to admit, unless forced. He has been a great help. As has Charles, who knows someone in the House of Lords."

"There can be no reconciliation?"

"I do not know if I wish to see less of her than she wishes the worst on me. No, Elizabeth. We are far beyond that."

She could not think, immediately, of what to say. "It's all so sudden."

"Yes."

"Will you answer my question if I ask?"

"You must ask it first."

"Edmund," she said, but he kept a straight face. "Did you decide not to tell us or was it really a surprise?"

"I knew something was wrong during the winter, but I didn't know the depth of it. And, in my typical fashion, I ignored what I did not understand, which is her main argument against my character as a loving husband. To the extent that it went behind my back, I was truly blindsided." He continued, "I was a fool. I was a fool to marry her so young, when I was not prepared for the effort of sustaining a happy relationship with my wife. I was a fool not to listen to her complaints about my distracted behavior because I was used to it from my family. And I was a fool not to see it coming."

"It does not mean you deserved it."

"You are being kind."

"How am I supposed to be? If you wanted a dressing-down for your foolishness, you would have invited Georgie." Now that made him smile. "I am proud of you for facing it, and I am happy to see you came home to do it." She waited for his answer to the unspoken question.

He did not fail her. "I was ... surprised at the extent of Charles' support."

"He is your brother. I would have been upset if he had done anything less."

"We have not a recent history of being kind to each other when unnecessary for public display." He squirmed in his seat. "Do you think it is true, that this scandal will hurt his own prospects, should he ever reform?"

"It will hurt your chances of not showing an improved character if you do not stop using the word 'reform' in reference to our brother." She paused, but Edmund did not dispute the charges. "He has told me on many occasions that he has every intention of marrying when he finds someone with whom he wishes to have a family. And it is Matthew's opinion that he is too rich to be hurt by a divorce in the family, especially not after a few months have passed."

"Then we must place our faith in the limited attention span of the Ton."

"I have put my faith in worse things."

*******************************************

Meanwhile, Matthew Turner had a mission of his own, and found Charles Bingley in the study. "Mr. Bingley."

"Mr. Turner. I trust you are well."

"Very well."

"My sister is with child, is she not?"

Matthew stumbled. "How did you know?"

Charles only shrugged.

There was no reason not to beam, even if it meant also blushing a little. "We did not mean to announce it so soon, not wanting to appear gloating in the face of Edmund's misfortunes. Please do not tell anyone."

"I will tell Eliza, but I suspect she already knows," Charles said. "I wish to congratulate her. And you, Mr. Turner." He poured two glasses for them to toast. "To the happy news. I have decided I cannot be an uncle enough times over."

"You can be more than an uncle, you know."

A solemn look passed over Charles' face. "Perhaps someday. One fit-inducing disaster at a time. I am not brave like Edmund."

Matthew thought it an odd time for Charles to compliment his brother, but decided not to mention it.

*******************************************

"What is it?" Charles said to Eliza's giggling after they were all seated at the dinner table. She sat next to her husband, across from Edmund, and tried to hide her mouth with her napkin, to no great success. "What have I done?"

"It's so strange seeing you in Papa's chair. Not to give any offense."

"Of course not," Edmund said, which earned a snicker from Mr. Turner.

"I guarantee you, it is nowhere near as bizarre a spectacle as seeing Geoffrey and Georgie sitting at the ends of the Pemberley table," Charles said with a huff.

"I can't imagine it. When did you see that?"

"Last year, when I visited Georgie during her confinement and Aunt and Uncle Darcy had gone to Scotland. Trust me, our sister could not seem less thrilled at the prospect."

"She's been married for eight years," Edmund said as soup was served. "She ought to be adjusted to the idea that she is to be mistress of Pemberley."

"We all _ought_ to be something," Matthew said. "Taller, younger, happier, smarter, more responsible, less often drunk..."

"Better shaven," Charles added.

"I thought you liked it," Edmund grumbled.

"You look thirty."

"Well, I feel thirty."

"He's right," Eliza said. "It will look more dashing on you in a few years."

"I thought it was _my_ decision to appear before Parliament the petulant, old husband?" Edmund replied, and it took them a moment to realize he was joking. "Yes, I am capable of levity as well as killing the mood as easily as Georgie kills ... well, everything in her way."

Matthew turned to Charles. "Whatever's in his glass, I want some."

*******************************************

Geoffrey entered the bedchamber to find Georgie pacing with Brian in her arms, trying to lull him into sleep as she held up a letter in her other hand. Upon seeing him, she closed it and passed it to him. "It's from Eliza."

"What does she say?"

"She is optimistic. Edmund is preparing himself for Parliament, but he seems to be weathering it well. She says he even made a joke."

"That doesn't sound like Edmund."

"He laughed when he was younger," she said, shifting a fussy Brian to her other shoulder. "Before he became so _serious_. No, darling, no more." She took his hand away from her gown. They were trying to wean him, and like William had been, he was not as invested in the concept as they were.

Geoffrey didn't try to take him. Brian did better in his mother's arms. He was less willful than Alison or William had been, but more emotionally attached. Geoffrey suspected the beginning of a quieter personality, for which he felt a twinge of guilt for being grateful.

"What is it? Why are you staring?"

Geoffrey returned to the immediate situation. "I'm sorry. I was just ... reminiscing." He took the letter, and skimmed it quickly. "She does sound very encouraging. Do you think we ought to visit?"

"That's not very polite to our guests."

He rolled his eyes. "I mean afterward."

"By then Edmund will likely be at Kirkland, hiding under a rock while the Ton makes mincemeat of him. Then we shall visit – or invite him here. He's never been."

"This is true."

"I don't know what it is about this part of the country, but it does wonders for people. Consider George as an example." The George Wickham who arrived a week before, pale and uneasy, was transformed into a happy husband again, and his wife's spirit lifted with his.

"Town is deadly for Darcys," he said. "And some Bingleys. You've always despised it."

"Not all of it. Just the parts that are socially acceptable for me to visit, and therefore completely uninteresting."

"Not everything has to involve violence to be interesting."

"No," she said, "but it helps."

...Next Chapter - Suitable Grounds


	5. Suitable Grounds

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

Any comments on this story? A lot of big things are going on, in Regency terms (divorce! shocking!). I know Edmund has not been a main character, but I must have promised at some point he would have his time to shine, and the time is this story. Also, no comments make author go something something. (Kudos if you got that reference)

* * *

Chapter 5 - Suitable Grounds

Edmund decided to leave early in the morning, stopping for breakfast on the way to the courthouse instead of partaking at home. It would avoid Eliza and Matthew, and he had not an ear for their sympathies, however well-meaning they were. He did not want to discuss what he was about to do.

Unfortunately his escape was not perfect. Charles Bingley III, dressed for an outing with his walking stick and hat, was waiting by the door. "I hope you know the way to the courthouse."

"Why are you doing this?"

Charles really did, despite his blond hair, resemble their father with his gentle demeanor and expression. "You should not be expected to do this alone."

"This is my disaster. If you are to see the inside of a courtroom and the humiliation of the Bingley name, you may do it on your own terms."

"No," Charles said with a sigh. "That would be much worse than this." It wouldn't be a civil court. Sodomy was a hanging crime. "Come. I know an excellent French café you must try. You shouldn't accuse a man of adultery on an empty stomach."

Edmund did not find the will to resist. Fortunately Charles was mainly quiet, often leaving his younger brother to his thoughts as they had a delicious breakfast and proceeded to the courthouse, to wait in line to lodge the civil suit against Mr. Jonas Richards, Edmund's former manservant and the father of Lucy Bingley's unborn child. It was the first of three lawsuits that Edmund would have to file and win to obtain the divorce. As per agreement with his wife, he would assume all the legal fees if she and Richards would not fight the charges and willingly confess to their adulterous affair.

The courthouse was no larger than any normal house, with rooms as small as a town house, and the hallway outside the courtroom was small and filled by clerks, attendants, and law students in wigs. Despite his resolve, his knees nearly went out from under him when he was forced to acknowledge the presence of his former employee. Cutting him in public would do no good to their agreement. "Mr. Richards."

"Mr. Bingley." Richards was younger than most manservants, and exceedingly talented at fashion decisions (which Edmund always hated, hence the decision to hire him). Nonetheless his dress was solemn.

Edmund did not introduce his brother and no further conversation was made until they were called before the judge. Only after the door was shut behind him did Edmund feel the acute loss of the presence of his brother, who was not permitted to accompany him. The only spectators were a dozen law students, scribbling hastily on their notepads as the clerk read the charges Edmund paid handsomely to level against his former employee.

The judge, not entirely unaccustomed to this sort of case, did not seem surprised when Richards stood beside his accuser in front of the bench and admitted to being guilty of the charges. Even if the results were predicted, the judge would not make it easy on either of them, and demanded a comprehensive account of the beginning of Mr. Richards' liaison with Mrs. Bingley – including dates and how they conspired to keep the cuckold of a husband in the dark. Edmund felt the eyes of every law student on him even though he knew very well they were looking down at their notes as Mr. Richards, with some embarrassment, provided a long and sordid number of encounters, scheduled around Edmund's business meetings.

But the most horrifying moment came when the judge turned to Edmund and said, "Mr. Bingley, can you say with all certainty that there is no chance you are the father of your wife's child?"

"I can, Your Honor."

"You have not been with your wife for several months."

He swallowed. "I have not."

"Was Mrs. Bingley ever previously with child?"

"No, Your Honor." He was fairly sure Lucy had never miscarried because her courses were always on schedule, as she kicked him out of the bedchamber when they arrived.

"And you have chosen not to seek an annulment."

"We have no grounds for an annulment, Your Honor."

This seemed to satisfy the judge. An annulment would require lying on Edmund's part about his abilities as a husband, but it would be far easier – and cheaper – to obtain. He banged his gavel. "The court finds Mr. Jonas Richards guilty of adultery, and demands that he pay a fine to Mr. Bingley of one hundred pounds, to be paid by the end of the month. Mr. Richards, failure to pay will mean debtors prison for you."

"I am aware, Your Honor." Richards did not have one hundred pounds. He wouldn't be paying any fine, but nor would he be going to prison. That was their agreement.

The judge turned to his assistant. "Please have the papers drawn up for the bishop. Mr. Bingley, you may proceed to an ecclesiastical court when you declare the fine is paid. Expect the appropriate paperwork within the week." He banged his gavel again. "Court adjourned."

He did not want to see Richards' face, and spurned his former manservant's attempt to offer some condolence. If he wanted forgiveness, he was not going to get it immediately after Edmund's public humiliation. All of the court records were made public by unscrupulous clerks; he had no doubt his name would be in the evening's paper. Instead he turned and left, to find Charles waiting on the other side of the door. "It's done."

Charles nodded and they made a hasty retreat to the carriage, and back to the Bingley house. Never had Edmund found the halls of the house so comforting in that they would shield him, for the time being, from all that happened beyond them.

This was not meant to happen. He had his own house, bought and paid for, and occupied by his wife. She had no claim on it and not forcing her out was merely a courtesy; she would leave when the trails were over.

"One down, only two remain," Charles said after the servants removed their coats. He smiled, not out of joy but some attempt at comfort.

It was so genuine; Edmund was overwhelmed. His older brother had every advantage because of his birth – he inherited everything, he went through all of the life events first (in most cases), and in the end, he would be the living legacy to the name Charles Bingley, sitting at the head of the table. That he was a sexual deviant of the worst kind made no difference provided it was not exposed and he was not sent to the gallows, and the weight of that was often visible on his face. He lived with that fear; he understood.

Without speaking except for a brief stutter that was meant to be a mumbled thanks, Edmund Bingley lost all of the footing he had in the world and fell weeping into his brother's arms.

Charles said nothing but a few whispered words of comfort, but he stood there and held him up.

*******************************************

"Uncle Danny!" Stewart Maddox shouted, and ran to give his uncle a proper greeting of a hug. Frederick and Heather knew it was useless to tell Stewart to bow; he was old enough to know Danny couldn't see him, and more importantly, old enough to argue the point.

Daniel Maddox Junior returned the hug and patted his nephew on the head. "Hello, nephew. My, how tall you've gotten." He smiled and accepted Heather's offer of Danielle. As usual, the servant brought the chair up behind him so he could sit with his goddaughter. "Lady Heather. Frederick."

"Daniel." Heather was the only one who called him that. "Your father is at the tailor's, but he should be back shortly. How is your mother?"

"I should not speak ill of her," he said, but he was smiling.

"What did she do?" Frederick demanded.

"It was more of what she said, and I am sure she meant it to be private. Those are not words you use in public."

"Maybe sailors."

He chuckled. "Yes, but that wouldn't explain how she ever learned them. Nonetheless, I am sure Lucy Bingley's ears are burning to this very moment." Danielle grabbed his nose and pulled on it, but he didn't stop her. "I didn't want to leave her alone with Father here, but she's gone to Kirkland."

"Good." Frederick picked up his daughter, who wailed in his arms, and Danny stood. He politely dismissed the servant who offered to take his arm. "Well, we haven't any news that isn't a few days old. Edmund went for his first trial today, but there's no word back yet. Before dinner, we should hear something. If not, I'll go over there myself."

"Emily and Henry wanted to come," Danny said. Henry Jordan was now a barrister with an office in Cambridge. Emily was very happy in the home they made together, "but they weren't sure, and Henry has a trial anyway. He regrets he is not a divorce lawyer."

"Edmund needs patience and money more than a family lawyer," Frederick said. "Hopefully, he has both."

*******************************************

Danny Maddox's quarters were renovated in a strictly Japanese style, which frustrated the servants but he found easier to manage. "No," Danny said as he sat on the tatami mat on the raised portion of the wooden floor. His voice was unusually stern and directed to Stewart Maddox, who had one curious hand on Danny's cane. "You shouldn't touch things that aren't yours." He took the cane and put it down beside him instead of against the wall.

"Uncle Danny, may I see your swords again?"

"Your father doesn't let you see them?"

"He says you're a bad influence."

"Is that true?" Danny said, startling Frederick, who thought he had entered rather silently. "You are on some ridiculous high ground to be saying that." But he did remove the cover and open the case that held both of his samurai swords, removing the shorter one and slowly drawing it from its case.

"I ... might have said something to that effect," Frederick said. "In jest." He gulped as the blind, crippled Danny Maddox swung his very real and very sharp sword, to Stewart's amusement and his own discomfort. But Danny was quick to put it back in its sheath before any harm could be done. "After all, I have a brother people whisper is mad."

Danny laughed. "I would not be the first relative you called mad and certainly not the last. Only this time, you would be wrong." He removed the longer sword, the katana, from the stand and handed it to Stewart. "It's rather heavy. And don't open it. It's very sharp."

"Did you ever fight someone with it?"

"Yes."

"Did you kill them?"

"No," he said. "All life is precious, every living thing. Even the smallest fly."

"Mother says we have to get someone to kill the bugs in our basement."

"There's a paint you can put down," Frederick clarified. "It wards them off with its smell, away from the food, or something like that." He took the sword out of his son's hands. "Come now. You're due for a serious scrubbing. Look at you."

"Father!"

"You can see your uncle later. Go!" After Stewart ran off, Frederick shook his head. "When did I become the disciplinarian?"

"An unfortunate side effect of fatherhood. Unwelcome, I know." Danny accepted the return of his sword and put it back in the case. "He's not at all like me – I was so serious. You have to be serious to have any patience for serious study, even if it does involve swords. He just thinks it an entertainment."

"I don't doubt it, but it doesn't mean I want him waving one of those things around," Frederick said, and sat down on the edge of the platform. "How are you?"

"Well."

"How is Mother really?"

"Well, all things considered. I am not so much surprised in her defense of Edmund as in the ferocity of her attacks on Lucy's imagined character. Her vocabulary is remarkable for an upstanding woman."

"Is she concerned about Father?"

"She doubts this will be connected to him, much less hurt his social standing," Danny said. "She's more concerned about Edmund's. And mine, actually."

Marriage was a sore subject when it concerned Danny – to everyone except Danny, who was decidedly neutral on the subject of his own future happiness. He would be provided for, so his being the younger son did not mean he did not have a fortune, but being not only blind but disfigured was a near-insurmountable barrier between him and eligible ladies. "Mother will always worry about you," Frederick said. "And she'll always worry about me. It's what mothers _do_."

"G-d help us if they find any other occupation."

*******************************************

Two days after Danny's arrival, Edmund paid a call on the Maddox house. They had all eaten at the Bingley house the night before, but at dinner he was quiet and looked down at the mainly uneaten food on his plate. Only after a bottle of wine did he crack a few jokes on an unrelated subject before falling asleep on the couch.

The next morning he was around surprisingly early, alert and more awake than Frederick, who greeted him with sleepy eyes and showed him to Danny's chambers. They had a wooden porch to them, so Danny could sit on it and tend to the garden in the courtyard.

"Mr. Maddox."

"Mr. Bingley." He stood, and waited for Edmund to take a seat on the cushioned mat beside him before setting his cane down and returning to his work. "What brings you by my ridiculously-furnished corner of the house? It must ruin the general aesthetic; Frederick and Lady Heather were so kind to do it."

"Your family would do anything for you."

"You say it as if it is not the same for you."

Edmund had no easy response to this. He eventually said, "I've gotten the paperwork back from the first trial. The bishop has to see it next, for the ecclesiastical trial. I suppose I should be happy."

"Why?"

"Because it's all going through. I'll pay for it, but I'll recover. And with Charles and Uncle Maddox's connections, the bill might actually pass, and we'll both enter the wonderful world of legal and religious separation. And she'll go to Italy with her settlement and her lover. Maybe she'll even marry him. He is the father."

Danny still had his hands in the soil, as he tried to position the tiny spruce just right. "It is my limited understanding that once divorced from her, you are free of any financial obligations you have to your former wife."

"She knows she'll get the settlement anyway. I'll pay any price."

"Then she must know you're a man of your word."

Edmund swallowed. "I said I would love her and protect her until the end of my days."

"I'm sure at the time, you meant it. And still do, if just a little." Danny sat up, wiping his hands. "Rage can be so terribly draining. Only the cruelest of men can hold onto it for very long."

Edmund did not answer at first, and Danny began to sort his tools, which for him was a long and meticulous process.

"You've always said that you never went after the man who crippled you," Edmund announced, and Danny turned his head as if to look at him. "I was thinking that you must have wanted to."

"Yes. Oh yes. He was very wise to disappear for a full year, and even wiser to leave me on the steps of a monastery, where someone would take care of me. Otherwise I don't think either of us would still be alive," he said. "I could have stayed angry, but it was so very hard to heal and have that weight on me at the same time. It might have even killed me."

"What did you do? Just accept that you'd been wronged?"

"And that I had been wrong to shout and whine in front of an armed and impatient person," Danny answered. "In order to find a path to peace, one must first accept the fact that desire is the cause of suffering."

"I would like to take a dip into heresy and say 'Amen.' It is tempting. You never left that monastery, did you?"

Danny shook his head and laughed. "I go to church every Sunday like a good boy. After all, it's to my advantage, as _our_ L-rd and Savior heals the blind."

Edmund chuckled. "Are you waiting on that one?"

"I'm not holding my breath."

"You're cruel – making me laugh," he said. "What am I going to do?"

Danny shrugged. "You could take up gardening."

"You are so very lucky you're blind, because I'm inclined to hit you with something right now."

"Indeed. In this respect, I am a lucky man."

...Next Chapter - An Old Friend


	6. An Old Friend

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

Thank you for your comments. A number of you have requested an explanation on how Regency divorce works. Well, it didn't happen very often, so the sources of the actual process were hard to find, but here's how I think it happened, when it actually did:

**Regency Divorce** - It involved a a three-stage legal process. Grounds for divorce were: bigamy (though it was unclear which wife would remain married if they were from different countries), incest, or if the wife cheated on the husband (but not the husband cheated on the wife). If a husband was impotent, the marriage could simply be annulled, a much easier process.

Stage 1 - "Crim Con" court. The cuckolded husband takes his wife's lover to court for violating their marriage. If found guilty, the lover has to pay a fine, and with the marriage violation now being public record, they can proceed to stage to.

Stage 2 - "Separation from Bed and Board." Ecclesiastical court where the bishop, upon hearing evidence from the husband and wife, and considering the previous ruling, declares that they are "separated." They are not, at this point, divorced, and if they marry other people it will be considered bigamy. A child born at this point to the wife - even if fatherhood has already been established as being the lover's - is considered by English law to be the son of her husband, and his legal responsibility.

Stage 3 - An Act of Parliament. Parliament passes an act declaring the marriage invalid, and allowing both parties to remarry. Any child born after this point is now a bastard. Parliament would do this for political pressure (or not do it because of political pressure, in the case of the Prince Regent versus his wife, whom was more politically popular) or just outright bribery.

Divorces would be a huge scandal, and result in a massive loss of status for both parties, but it would always be worse for the woman. However, it probably wouldn't happen at all unless both the wife and the lover were complacent and gave testimony, so in this case Lucy Bingley has essentially demanded a settlement from Edmund of 20,000 pounds - more than enough for her to live on - for her complaceny in her own divorce proceedings. Edmund, who doesn't want to stay married to her anymore, has to pay up.

In the next chapter: George and Cynthia's vacation continues.

* * *

Chapter 6 - An Old Friend

If there was one thing that truly frustrated Dr. Maddox about his condition, it was that it took away his livelihood. He was still an anatomy professor at Cambridge and he could still listen to lectures at the Royal Society concerning the latest in medicinal advances, but his title of "doctor" was as honorary as his knighthood. Or at least, it felt that way.

Since Brian's school was closed for the summer, he was living in his home outside of town, which was becoming increasingly less secluded as London expanded. Nadezhda Maddox greeted him as he stepped out of the carriage and took his arm. "Dr. Maddox."

"Your Highness."

"Your timing is a bit off. Brian is taking his medicine."

"Can he still speak?"

"Perhaps too much."

He smiled and let her lead the way, but when he was deep enough into the Maddox house, he could smell the fumes and feel the smoke on his face as he heard his brother scramble to his feet. "Danny. I didn't know – "

"Don't get up." Dr. Maddox waited for a servant to find him a chair. He could feel the breeze, so they were obviously on a porch. "How are you?"

"Well." Brian coughed, and cleared his throat. "Bad – bad timing. I know you hate it – "

"You're just following your doctor's orders. Presumably."

"So you're not senile enough yet to completely trust me," Brian replied with a chuckle. "Please – take this away." He was speaking to a servant, who removed something from the room, no doubt Brian's Indian smoking device. "It's a very – he says it's light. Light dose. Is that right, Nady?"

"He's on a very low dose," Nadezhda said. "Less than a glass of laudanum."

Dr. Maddox nodded. He didn't disapprove of Brian resorting to opium to treat his back pain. His brother skirted around the issue for years before even admitting that he had it, but Brian Maddox was nearing seventy, and was walking crooked for almost half his life. It was Nadezhda who admitted that Brian needed to swallow his samurai pride and see a doctor, and of course he was Dr. Maddox's brother, so he saw only the best. Still, there was nothing to be done about it. Dr. Maddox decided he would rather not watch his brother suffer for the rest of his life.

"How do you feel?" he repeated.

"Better. _Now_." Brian was probably grinning, and he put his hand on his brother's. "A pair we make."

"We've always made a pair."

Brian laughed, disproportionate to the amount that was due. "That's true. How are you, Danny?"

Nadezhda tapped on his shoulder and offered him a glass of tea, which he accepted. The servant could have done it, and even should have done it, but she always served him herself. "Your Highness. Yes. I am quite busy feeling useless about Edmund's situation."

"I'm sure you've not been entirely useless, Doctor," Nadezhda said. "He is young. Just a boy."

"I suppose to us, yes. I was not married until I was thirty."

"How is Lady Maddox?" Brian asked, putting emphasis on the _Lady_.

"I suspect Lucy Bingley is in danger of sneezing herself to death if my wife has anything to say about it. And she does have a lot to say." To which, his brother laughed, of course. "But she's gone to Kirkland to comfort her brother and Mrs. Bingley, who are respectfully attempting to let their son handle his own crisis."

"Do you think he will get his divorce?" Nadezhda asked.

"It might bankrupt him, but he will get it, unless Parliament is in a particularly ornery mood. Of course it helps that his wife is aiding him however she can, the whole thing being her idea."

"Has anyone spoken with her?"

"Only Edmund and his solicitor."

Brian's voice was slurred, as if he had drifted off briefly and was now returning to life. "You have another nephew – Charles. 's not married is he?"

Dr. Maddox frowned. "No."

"But the niece – Georgie's sister – she's married."

"Yes."

"So, only Charles," Brian said. "I'm ashamed ... to be receiving you like this."

"Don't think of it." He knew Brian was trying desperately not to nod off. "I am on my way out of town for the evening, so I wanted to stop by and see my brother."

"But you can't," he replied, something Dr. Maddox attributed to the opium.

"All the same. Good day, Brian."

"Good day, Danny."

Nadezhda took his arm again and guided him back in the house. "I'm sorry."

"I said you don't have to be. It's not every day, is it? I don't care how small the dose is; it is an addictive drug."

"He only takes it two or three times a week. Much less than the doctor said to do."

He could feel her trembling, and Nadezhda was such a strong-willed woman. "Your Highness, I don't want him to suffer."

"The doctor was going to administer his dose by injection. They have that needle now, but he said maybe the pipe evens out the dose. Besides, he likes it better than the needle." She guided him to the dining room table, where there was some lunch in front of him. "Brian doesn't want to face it, but I don't know how we'll open the dojo in the fall. His best students have gone to University."

Brian relied heavily on his higher-level students to teach the younger ones, as Nadezhda and Georgie could never be teachers. Dr. Maddox bit into a biscuit. "I never imagined Brian as a professor, even that of Japanese knighthood. Someone will come along; Brian has that odd sort of luck."

"He does." The princess was drinking her own tea. "How are your children?"

"Emily is happy, Frederick seems to have been tamed by his own children, and Danny is better than I could have imagined he would be in his situation. So, I cannot complain."

Dr. Maddox amused her with stories of his grandchildren; Nadezhda had a special place for the children she had never had. Despite years of faded hopes, Brian admitted in private that it was a relief to both of them when her courses ended, as they were such a painful ordeal for her. But Dr. Maddox could not dwell too long. "I must be going if I am to be there by nightfall."

"Of course, Doctor. Who are you visiting?"

"An old friend."

*******************************************

"Parliament? Are you serious?" was the reply. "You know damn well I've always done my best to stay as far away from the law as possible."

Dr. Maddox smiled. "And since when has Parliament had anything to do with the law?"

He sat in the lawn chair on the veranda of the grand home of Dr. Simon Creswell. It had a lovely breeze from the lake nearby, just perfect in the late afternoon – time for more tea and maybe a drink before dinner. The view was supposed to be superb, and on her only visit to the place for Simon's wedding to Lady Agatha, Caroline assured him that it was. He regretted not seeing it, or Simon, who assured him he was just a wrinkled old man like anyone else, and not much to look at, and he preferred if Dr. Maddox had in his head only the image of the young surgeon he once knew.

"However proven your point," Simon said, "I'm afraid I cannot help you, and hope it was not the only reason for your visit."

"I can only fret uselessly in Town for so long; I thought at least I could fret over my nephew where the air was better."

"Well, the Creswells did have political influence – or my father did – and as he went through great lengths to have me declared dead, I'd have some trouble laying claim to his old contacts now." Simon had been the oldest of his brothers, meant to inherit, until his sexual inclination became known and he was hoisted from the house and the family, and waited until they were dead to find his sister and lay claim to his house. Dr. Maddox was too old to be uncomfortable in his presence, having abandoned the idea when he stood up for him at Simon's wedding, Simon's declaration of love for him being very much in the past. "Does he need money?"

"No. And if he does, there will be people lining up to supply it."

"Is he the older or younger brother?"

"Younger. His fortune is his own; his father gave him an amount when he graduated and he invested it extremely wisely. I have no doubt my brother-in-law will support his son getting back on his feet, however more tedious it will be to do a second time."

"But he cannot put the house up as a particularly enticing bribe."

"No. He does not stand to inherit. The Bingley name isn't old anyway; Mr. Bingley bought the house shortly after he married. His father made a fortune in the silk trade and left it all to him to build the family name."

"Really? No offense meant, but speaking to your wife, I would never know the difference."

He snickered. "If I were to tell her, Caroline would be both incensed and honored that you said that."

"It's all so different now. I know wealthier tradesmen than lords. Sooner or later they might be done with the whole nonsense and weigh the social opinion of every man by his bank account."

"You spent too long in France to be of that opinion. England is too set in its ways."

"Perhaps. Four centuries later and even a king still has trouble getting a divorce. And speaking of royalty, I hear our sovereign is not in the best of health."

"He is not, but he will live."

"And no legitimate male heirs, though I know of a young son of his brother George."

"I never should have told you that. It's treason."

"I am guilty of so many crimes against nature, I might as well add treason to the list," Simon said. "It's for the best. Being king would go to Frederick's head, would it not?"

"It would go to anyone's head. But we're not to have a king. The heir is the Princess Victoria." He added, "I met her."

"You did? Do you emit some primal musk that attracts royalty? This will be the third."

"Fourth. I met King William once when he was Duke of Clarence, at Carlton House."

"And you come to me for help? You travel in much higher circles."

Dr. Maddox shook his head. "The Princess Victoria was lodging at Chatsworth with the Duchess of Devonshire, and I was at Pemberley. Mr. and Mrs. Darcy were invited to dinner, and when they discovered my connection to her family, so were we."

"And? What say you of our future queen?"

"Rather timid. Highly intelligent and well read. Her family calls her 'Drina.'"

"And what does Lady Maddox think?"

"Her face is too small and round. She is pretty enough but her looks will not age well. She does speak a lot of languages, though. On that they had some common ground, however briefly they spoke."

"And did she say anything to you?" Simon asked. "The Princess, not your wife."

"She only spoke to me long enough to confirm that I had been her uncle's physician. What else would she have to say to an old man like me, known only for his connection to her scandalous uncle during the worst public years of his life?"

"You can be intimidating. Your glasses are very intimidating."

"I don't mean for them to be."

"Then pick a color that isn't black."

Because it was Simon, who was always kind at heart, Dr. Maddox smiled.

*******************************************

Tired of feeling a burden to everyone, Dr. Maddox diagnosed himself with restless nerves and stayed only the night before heading north. Edmund Bingley had the ecclesiastical courts to go through before he could think about Parliament, and with the train, the doctor was not so far away. He held his stomach to Liverpool and from there on the road to Derbyshire.

However unlikely it was that another woman would throw herself into his arms, he always remembered Caroline's scent, however odd it made her feel when he mentioned it or complimented it. "Caroline."

"Daniel."

"Dr. Maddox," Charles Bingley said to his right. "What a wonderful surprise. We were not expecting you."

"I will not take up much room."

Bingley laughed, but there was a strain in his voice. The month had not been an easy one on him.

"Dr. Maddox," Mrs. Bingley said, announcing herself.

Dr. Maddox released his wife and bowed in her direction. "Mrs. Bingley."

"Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy will be here for dinner. Would you like to rest before then?"

"Very much, thank you."

He remembered the guest rooms, and what they looked like. It felt good to be somewhere he had once seen, and need not imagine. However much it was described, he could not fathom the train.

He did not know how long he slept, but after the train and then the carriage, he was happy not to be moving. He woke slowly, but that did not mean he was not aware. "Caroline?"

She sat down on the bed next to him. "Are you awake?"

"I did just call out your name, didn't I?"

She swatted him. "So how was Dr. Creswell?"

"The same. Not of much help politically, but I didn't expect it of him."

"And your brother?"

"Not so well." He repositioned himself so he was a bit more upright and opened his eyes. "It's nothing new, just his back again. He was so drugged I could hardly speak to him. Her Highness says they'll have to close his school next year unless they find another teacher."

"We should send him something."

"I don't think what he wants is anything material."

"But it does not threaten his life, this pain in his back?"

"No."

"Then we ought to be grateful."

He sighed; he didn't feel like being grateful. "Our sons send their love, of course. They seem content."

"I wish Danny would marry," she said. It was not the first time she had said it.

"As I think you are keenly aware, marrying is not so simple a thing if one means to do it right," he said, and smiled a little. "He does not need to rush into things to gain a nursemaid. Frederick has made it abundantly clear he will take care of him if we were to lose our senses and cease to do so. Let him wait for someone he loves, and hopefully someone who returns the emotion."

"I would rather see it than hope for it."

"Then you must be patient."

"I have not your patience."

"Then I can only express my condolences."

Caroline laughed. "And how is our brave nephew?"

"He did not sound so brave when I spoke with him last. But he is through one trial, and the way is paved for the second. He only needs the bill of Parliament if he wishes to remarry."

"Without it, Lucy cannot remarry and her child will be a bastard," she said. "Thereby putting him in league with the mother and father."

"I thought you had more sympathy for bastards."

"When they're raised by just parents," she replied. "Edmund could wait until the child is born to try for the bill, and make her child a bastard."

"I have no stomach for that kind of vengeance, and neither does Edmund."

"Because he's my brother's son," Caroline said, "and Charles has not the stomach for anything."

"You rob him of his due. He raised Georgie, and that must have been a terrifying experience."

*******************************************

"Dr. Maddox."

"Mr. Darcy. Mrs. Darcy." Dr. Maddox politely nodded his head, as he did not have the orientation of where to bow. He was glad it was going out of fashion. Caroline led him to his seat. He found himself starving, now that the prospect of food was in front of him.

Beyond the necessary exchanges of everyone's health, the conversation was pleasantly light. After so many discussions of Parliament and bills and bastard children, Dr. Maddox was relieved that the family still knew how to have a conversation that did not surround a crisis. Darcy and Bingley were constantly being called to spearhead the search for a new Vicar after the recent death of the old one, and Darcy avoided the social but not obligatory responsibility as best he could, and Bingley had never searched for a Vicar before. Derbyshire, or at least Darcy's half of it, was quiet as ever, especially with the collapse of the local mining industry, as raw materials were now imported from foreign sources. As long as the land was good and the water pumped through the mills, the people were content – or at least, Darcy was.

Bingley constantly talked of retiring but never did it; it would likely dissolve the company now that Brian was in retirement and retained only a few shares. Whether someone within the Bingley family – Charles III, Edmund, or perhaps Mr. Turner – would step up to lead remained a viable alternative. He talked about going to India again, this time with Jane, an idea that percolated but never took form, as someone was always getting married or with child and they wanted to be home for that. Now they would have not one but two sons who would be eligible bachelors (after Edmund survived the compulsory period of being a social outcast) and they were never ones to miss a wedding.

And of course there were the Darcy girls. Anne Jameson was traveling through the more spectacular parts of Ireland with her husband. Sarah, at least temporarily, swore off marriage entirely, and remained unwilling to submit to the marriage market, and to be "offered up like a rare bird" as she put it. So far, Elizabeth was the only one to complain, and Darcy left most of his unvoiced but obvious concern for his youngest daughter Cassandra, already complaining about being cooped up at Pemberley after her last social near-disaster.

And of their oldest children, nestled with their grandchildren in the woods of Lancashire? "I've informed Geoffrey that at the moment, I am not in the mood to tolerate any catastrophes," Darcy said. "I assume he had the decency to inform Georgiana."

"As my guest, you are lucky I have _decided_ not to be insulted by that," Bingley said.

"Who says I have not?" Jane said, and they all joined her in laughter.

...Next Chapter - The Lone Wolf


	7. The Lone Wolf

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

This chapter is not meant to be taken entirely seriously, I suppose. I don't really know what I was thinking when I was writing it, but I don't like to cut things for no reason. There's not really "an answer" so I'm curious to know what you think.

* * *

Chapter 7 - The Lone Wolf

When Dr. and Mrs. Wickham were tired of reading from the Darcy's small but unique library, or simply eager to take advantage of the fine weather, they knew the footpaths that wound around the property, and usually succeeded in not getting lost. In the wilderness there was no one else but the two of them, with no servants lurking on the other side of the door and no doorbell to ring and interrupt the silence. That notion alone was more than enough intimacy, especially for George, who was not so easily able to discard his worldly worries, but also for his wife and her growing and often rumbling belly. Though it was lost to him beneath layers of thick fabric, he stroked it anyway as they sat on a blanket some ways off the road.

"Do you think we could have a place like this?"

Not sure at first if she was referring to the woods or the house, he said, "If you wish."

"Not so grand, obviously. Something small, but away from Town, and that awful smog – "

"We could afford it."

"I've just grown used to it, living that way all my life."

"I thought you went abroad for your education?"

She nodded. "I went from London to Paris, with very little in between. My mother doesn't have any connections with houses in the countryside. When he was in Cambridge, Matthew would spend some of his summers hunting in Wales with friends. But that was for boys – or young men, I suppose, sowing their manly oats."

"You didn't get to do that sort of thing in seminary?" He said it with such severity that it took her a moment to realize he was joking and strike him with her fan. "I suppose if you wish to learn how to hunt – "

"I want no such thing! It's merely a point."

"Good, because I was going to say someone else will have to teach you. I've never held a gun in my life."

"You have only your wit and your sharp tongue, which can be deadly."

"You are being dramatic."

"You can kill a conversation. Especially with a man I didn't care for in the first place."

Thinking back to his first meeting with her (prior to two glasses of wine being thrown in his face), he smiled. "Good thing I am such a terrible man to have at a party, or I might never have met you."

They folded up the blanket and he threw it over his shoulder as they headed back, stopping by one of the larger ponds. As predicted, Geoffrey was there with his daughter and older son, attempting to give a fishing lesson, but without much success. "William! No!"

William Darcy grinned wickedly and tossed the rock anyway, further disturbing the water.

"You're scaring all the fish," Alison said.

"I'm hitting!"

"You're not. You're not going to hit a fish. You have to have patience, like Papa said."

Geoffrey, who noticed them first, looked up at the new arrivals. "George. Mrs. Wickham. I'm trying to teach William patience, but I don't think I'll meet with much success."

"William is less than three. How much patience did you have when you were three?"

"None," he grumbled. "William, Alison, address your cousin."

Alison put down her rod and rose. "Dr. Wickham. Mrs. Wickham."

William, who had his back turned, leaned so far backwards that he was looking up at them. "Cousin Wickham!" He dropped the rocks he was still holding and held up his arms, filthy sleeves and all.

George did not hesitate to lift him into his arms. "Did you catch any fish?"

"I was going to," Alison answered, "but Will scared them all away."

"That's not entirely correct," Geoffrey said. "I think this pond may be empty to begin with. I haven't caught anything here in weeks. He did succeed in stirring up quite a bit of dirt on the bottom, if we wish to give him credit for something."

"I wanted to fish."

"You don't even like to _eat_ fish."

Alison huffed and sat back down on her blanket, and Geoffrey pulled her in and kissed her on her head before letting her escape. Where her brother was filthy, Alison kept herself as immaculate as could be, fishing in the middle of the woods. She wiped her hands clean with a wet cloth before even attempting to touch anything else.

"I suppose we ought to call it a day – at least where the scared or nonexistent fish are concerned," Geoffrey said as he stood. They quickly packed up their things and William walked back with one hand clutching his cousin Cynthia's hand and the other in his mouth. Alison was her father's shadow, however dainty she was about it.

Upon arrival, the mistress of the house emerged from the Nursery. "Brian's just gone down at last. William, whatever you're thinking, don't do it." He laughed and threw himself into her arms, which she accepted, and even hoisted him up. "You're filthy."

"_Okaasan_."

She kissed him on the cheek and set him back down, and his nurse grabbed him before he could make it any further towards an escape from his water-related fate. Only then did Georgie turn her attention to her guests. "George. Mrs. Wickham."

"Georgiana."

"_Oi_, did you catch any fish?" she said to her daughter.

"Will scared them all away."

"Will's not to blame for all of your problems. Only some of them. You must learn to carefully assign blame to a sibling so it's more believable." Responding to the look from Geoffrey, she said, "What did I say?"

*******************************************

Though technically morning, it was still dark when Georgiana left. The evening had passed amiably, as the Wickhams were good dinner guests and the children were for the most part exhausted and behaved themselves. Geoffrey slept in his usual manner, on his stomach and like a rock, while Georgiana tossed and turned so much that it seemed by four that she was not to get any sleep and might as well begin her day.

The mist made it wetter and colder, but she kept above the grass and mud with her tall geta, which she also did not let inhibit her running, best defined as exceedingly fast and not entirely adhering to the laws of sanity and safety. For her all the trees were familiar, all the routes clear, and she was far off the real path and the ground.

She arrived at the ruins of the old church with a crash, digging her sandals into the fresh soil to bring herself to a stop before kneeling down to catch her breath. There was enough sunlight to poke through the leaves of the trees, but not enough to warm the air on the ground so that she could not still see her breath.

In the corners of her eyes she saw another cloud of hot air, and turned slowly to her left, then rolled over and to her feet in terror. The white wolf didn't belong; she was sure of it. Wolves were extinct in Lancashire, and she should have at least heard its approach. Its expression gave every impression that its mood could be described as foul at best, predatory at worst.

"Good _ookami_," she said, reaching for the hilt of her sword, but it was for the moment stuck because of the awkward angle from which it hung. "Good wolf," she repeated, and its growl simmered but did not cease. She could not will it away. It was smaller than her, but it terrified her all the same. She was not used to being scared. "What do you want? What did you come for?"

The wolf snarled, but otherwise did not provide a coherent answer.

"You don't belong here," she said. "Shoo!" She didn't want it here, hunting her, threatening this place where her children played. "_I will protect this place_," she said in Japanese.

It leapt before she could draw, easily tackling her with the force of its weight. She grabbed its jaw with both hands, holding it and partially willing it shut. "I told you to stay away!" Its breath was so close Georgie could feel it on her face, and see the shiny white fangs, matching its coat. She wasn't strong enough to hold the jaw shut; she had to let it go to strike the wolf, bashing it between the eyes with one hand. The other it caught, wrappings its jaws around her wrist.

*******************************************

"I knew it would come to this," Geoffrey said, looking at the article in front of him. Edmund's attempted divorce was in bold enough print that it edged out the drunken antics of Lady Habersham's ball. "It doesn't make it any easier."

"Has Georgie seen it yet?" George asked from across the breakfast table.

"She's not back yet." He put the paper down. "As much as I'm not eager to tell her, Brian's been crying all morning." Geoffrey turned to the footman. "Please have someone find Mrs. Darcy."

"Yes, sir."

He was then distracted by the minor crisis of William being caught with a mouthful of sand from the Zen garden, and it took Geoffrey and Nurse to hold him down long enough for his mouth to be washed out, and George's gentle reassurances that sand was not poisonous and unlikely to have any lasting effects on young Master William's innards.

"Mr. Darcy! Mr. Darcy!"

Just when Geoffrey was ready to declare himself done for the day with frustrations, the footman returned, and not with an expression he wanted. "The gardener's returned with Mrs. Darcy. She's hurt."

He didn't need to know or hear anymore from this man. He pushed past him and bolted out the door, George and Cynthia on his tail, to find the master gardener emerging from the footpath with the crumpled form of Georgiana Darcy in his arms.

"Georgie," he said, and nearly grabbed his wife from the man's arms, pulling her into his own.

"She's breathing," the gardener said, which Geoffrey barely heard. He needed to see for himself. He needed to hold her so close she could not leave him even if she woke and wanted to. He ignored George's protestations and rushed back inside before finally agreeing to place her unconscious form on the couch in the sunroom.

"Blankets. Get some damn blankets!" Geoffrey shouted at the footman, who took the verbal assault in stride and disappeared. "Mrs. Wickham, please distract the children if they approach. George – "

"She has a pulse," George said, removing his pocket watch as he pressed two of his fingers against her neck. "It's slow, but it is there. I need my bag."

It was fetched, and assessing that her back was not broken, nor any other part of her that they could tell, Geoffrey carried her to the bedchamber and repositioned her so her outer layer could be removed without destroying it. Her skin was cold and clammy, and she was not responsive, but they could not find a wound. George had a device to place to his ear and listen to her heartbeat, which he judged to be strong, even running a bit fast. He checked her arms, legs, and head carefully. "She's in shock, but doesn't appear to be wounded. Something must have given her a fright."

"Georgie doesn't _get_ frightened," Geoffrey protested. He held her hand. "There's scratches – on her wrist. Here." He brought the lamp closer so George could see.

"It looks like she fell."

"Ask the man where he found her."

George glanced at him, and realizing Geoffrey was unwilling to leave her side at this moment, he did the master's bidding, returning shortly. "He found her on the ground, as we see her now. No one was nearby."

"He doesn't know how long she was like this."

"No." George put his device away in his bag and retrieved a bottle, which he opened and held under her nose. She woke with a jolt, or at least her body did, and she turned her head away from the smell. "Georgie?"

She fought Geoffrey's hold on her and tried to turn away. She was shivering, and Geoffrey responded by covering her with a blanket and putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Georgie."

"It has to leave," she said, her voice hoarse as if she'd been shouting for a long time. She was barely intelligible. "It doesn't belong."

"What doesn't belong?"

"Georgie," George came around the other side and repeated, "what is it?"

"The wolf." She opened her eyes, which appeared normal. "The wolf – it was there." Georgie pointed, but ended up pointing at the lamp. Confused, she looked at George.

"You're back home. Geoffrey sent someone to find you." He added. "There's no wolf."

"There is!" It would have been a shout, but there was nothing left in her voice. "It wanted to take my children. I wouldn't let it. _Ariemasen_!"

"What?"

"She said it's not possible," Geoffrey said. "Georgie, there are no wolves in Lancashire."

"I know, G-ddamnit!" Her voice petered out at the end, and her head dropped on the pillow.

George took the advantage to pull Geoffrey away. "She fell and she's had some sort of shock. She needs rest and nourishment. Beyond that, there's no fever, and unless you can find a wound somewhere else on her, there's nothing to be done."

"She's had worse," Geoffrey grumbled. "Can you fetch her something? I don't want to leave her."

George just nodded and disappeared, and Geoffrey sat down next to her, taking one of her hands in his. It was so much smaller than his.

"You don't believe me," she whispered.

"I didn't say that."

"You don't."

"I didn't say that and I won't." He kissed her. "If you promise to drink something and lay quietly, I'll go looking for it."

"Promise?"

"Of course."

She did take tea, and a little broth. By then the maid got her out of her wet clothing and into a robe, and her shivering abated as she fell asleep. Geoffrey turned to his tasks in order: reassuring the children, thanking the Wickhams, and grabbing the master huntsman and the gardener who found her. "Take me there."

There were no wolves in Lancashire. There were no wolves in England. Even the final pack in Derbyshire was eliminated when he was a child. Yet he knew Georgie well enough to not dismiss her fears with a plain denial; nothing good would come of that. He also had some interest in seeing the site of his wife's accident, whatever it was. He knew very well she could slip into some kind of wild delusion just by meditating, though she hadn't done so since Japan.

"Here," the gardener said, leading them to the ruins his children loved to play in. A fallen tree trunk was rotting in the middle of them, but the gardener pointed to the ground beside the stream. "Mrs. Darcy was layin' right here, as if she just dropped."

Geoffrey squatted next to the small indentation and touched the crushed leaves, but they yielded no secrets. How long had she been lying there, and would she still be had George not said something?

He was distracted from his guilt by an indentation in the ground. There were several that matched the wooden teeth of her geta, which had slipped off her feet and he now collected from the riverbank. Then there were others that did not. He pointed, careful not to step in them. "What are those?"

"Animal prints. It looks like – I don't know. A dog or something. A predator."

"A wolf?"

"There are no wolves in England, Mr. Darcy."

"My question stands."

Even the huntsman could not properly reply, never having seen wolf prints that were real, but not knowing anything else to properly match to the prints before them, which trailed away from the immediate area and to the one remaining stone wall of the church. "Seems like it walked to the stone."

Geoffrey walked around it. No prints. "It didn't get any farther."

"'snot possible, Mr. Darcy. With all respects, sir."

"I wish I could say I hadn't seen stranger," he said with a shrug. "Let's go." There was nothing else to see there, and plenty of reasons to be home.

*******************************************

Georgie slept most of the day, waking to drink or to see her children, who wanted many reassurances that their mother was well. She held Brian, letting him sleep in her arms as she fielded questions from William about the wolf until Geoffrey stopped him. Georgie barely had any voice as it was. Cynthia sat with her, and read the paper, but Georgie was too distracted to have a major reaction to the news of Edmund's impending scandal. "I knew that," was all she said.

George checked on her several times, and was encouraging that she was recovering quickly, and probably would be fine by the morning. That was not enough for Geoffrey, who had a glass of brandy and sat with frayed nerves, watching Mrs. Wickham read to his unresponsive wife.

Dinner was a brief affair, with the chair at the end empty. He read to his children before they were put to bed, excused himself from his hosting duties, and climbed into bed beside his wife. It was a long time before guilt gave way and sleep overtook him.

*******************************************

Georgie woke in darkness, as if the last day hadn't happened, and was just another break between tossing and turning. But it wasn't, and she grabbed her wrist, only to find her hand still attached and only a few scratches there, nothing to even penetrate the skin. The big and warm thing that had her in his clutches was her husband, who'd fallen asleep with his arms around her. She could feel the tension in his hands, and kissed one of them.

He stirred. "Georgie?"

"Did you find it?"

"No," he mumbled. "It's gone. It went – I don't know."

"It was real."

"I know. I saw the tracks."

She wasn't sure whether to be horrified or vindicated. "I don't know what happened."

"You gave it some reason to leave, and it did. It's gone now."

_It's gone now_. That was all she needed, and she fell into a peaceful rest at last.

...Next Chapter - Doctor's Orders


	8. Doctor's Orders

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Notes:** Just wanted to let everyone know that book 2 is coming out August 1st, and is "The Price of Family" under a different name. So if you've read that story, and you buy it, you will get the same story with less historical and grammatical errors. Book 3, which is "Left to Follow" has significant changes to it and will be out Feb 2010.

Up next: The 2nd of the three parts to the divorce proceedings, the ecclesiastical trial. If you get lost, let me know in comments.

* * *

Chapter 8 - Doctor's Orders

"Mama!" In an unusually emotional display, Alison ran to greet her mother the next morning. Georgie no longer had to kneel to hug her, though she still had a foot on her. "Are you better?"

"Much better," she said. "I heard you took care of your brothers last night."

"Will tried to eat his colored chalk but I stopped him."

"Very good." William only had a few remaining.

"Did you really fight a wolf?"

She sighed, and looked at the breakfast table. Her husband nor her guests could offer much commentary. "I think so. It was very hard to tell." She kissed her on the head and let her go before taking her seat at the table. "George. Mrs. Wickham."

"Mrs. Darcy."

"Welcome back to the world of the living," Geoffrey said, raising his glass to her. She had seen him early, but didn't rise with him.

"You gave us a bit of a fright," George added.

"Fortunately a doctor was on hand," Georgie said, and accepted her morning tea from the servant. "Thank you."

"I really had little to offer," George replied, "and I would not have been much of a partner if Geoffrey had gone on a full-out wolf hunt."

"I thought wolves were extinct in England," Cynthia said.

"So are saints." Geoffrey smirked. "But we have one in Pemberley."

"What's this?"

Georgie rolled her eyes as she choked down her tea. "Not this story again."

"How can you believe in Japanese spirits and reincarnation and not believe in Pemberley's resident ghost?" Geoffrey said, and turned to George. "I thought you knew this story."

"I don't."

"My mother's told it a hundred times. When Anne was young – she must have been nine or ten – she met an old monk ghost in the chapel who told her that Uncle Grégoire was in trouble. She told Father about it, and he told Mother. And it turns out this corresponded with Uncle Grégoire's trouble in Spain, just before he left the church."

"Why do you think it is a saint?" Cynthia asked.

"Because I only know of one monk buried at Pemberley, and he's a Bavarian saint named Sebald."

"From before the Dissolution?"

"No – Uncle Grégoire brought him here during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. He was living in a monastery that was protecting the bones and it was sacked, so he brought them to England. For some reason, he and Father decided to give them a proper burial when it was all sorted out. I believe the Holy See still believes them at Nuremburg, but they're in Derbyshire."

George looked at Georgie for confirmation, but she only nodded. "Why don't I know of this?"

"You were living at Gracechurch Street. I suppose no one told you. We hardly had it posted in the banns."

"So suddenly you believe in ghosts," Georgie said.

"There's nothing sudden about a story my mother has stood by since I was a child. Not that I don't treat Anne's story – which she does not even remember – with a healthy dose of skepticism." He sipped his ale. "All the same, I am not saying I do _not_ believe in ghosts."

Georgie rolled her eyes. "Your philosophical abilities amaze me."

"What do you think?" Cynthia said to her husband.

"I think I know better than to question Mrs. Darcy's position on the matter."

*******************************************

With a heavy heart, and a prolonged explanation to William as to why they didn't have any parting gifts for him, not having left to buy him anything during their stay, the Wickhams said their goodbyes and departed Lancashire. In their month-long holiday, George regained his health and Cynthia successfully passed through the first months of her condition, and she found the morning easier to deal with.

Georgie embraced her. "Don't let George be George too long without a sympathetic ear."

"He's my husband."

"And I think he is dependent on you to maintain his sanity, as I am of Geoffrey."

Geoffrey, meanwhile, shook George's hand. "William's birthday at the latest?"

"I don't think he would allow me to miss it."

They climbed into the carriage that would take them to Liverpool, and from there the train would take them to London. George gave his wife a kiss on the cheek as their journey began. "Will you sit in judgment of my relatives, now that you have seen them on their own terms?"

Cynthia smiled. "Perhaps the harshest thing I can bring myself to say, if I must sit in judgment, is that they are not and will probably never be boring."

*******************************************

The return of Dr. and Mrs. Wickham brought about a number of reunions, the first being with Cynthia's brother, Matthew Turner, and his wife Eliza (nee Bingley). Before sitting down to dinner and heavier topics, she traded gossip with Cynthia before revealing that she was in a similar condition, and was hoping for a new arrival early in the new year. Matthew was beaming, and George offered him a knowing smirk as he toasted their happiness.

Through most of the meal, the conversation was light, as the Wickhams had many ridiculous stories to relate of their cousins (also Eliza's cousins) in Lancashire, and their guests were happy to bask in their own joy and the Wickhams' returned good humor. Eliza offered to play on the pianoforte, an item that was kept in tune but used only by company, and there was a round of cards before they managed to come at last to the more serious conversation.

"I think you will be fine, Dr. Wickham," Mr. Turner said, "in that your connection to Edmund is not a strong one." He put a hand over his wife's and squeezed it. "London is not an easy town for recognizable connections to Mr. Edmund Bingley."

"I would rather sit in the house all day and refuse to return calls to avoid the gossip than hide in Sussex," Eliza said. "Edmund refuses to let his parents shield him, so he has only Charles to keep him company. The Maddoxes are here, but Lady Heather has admitted to me that her family is putting her under constant pressure to leave Town until this is over. She won't, and cites Danny's presence as an excuse to play the good hostess and stay."

"While I doubt he will be hesitant to speak for himself," George speculated, "what does Frederick have to say?"

"Only that he's had more offers to card parties than he's had in years, and he suspects an ulterior motive to the invitations. His gambling friends are eager to lose their pounds to him."

"And the man himself?"

Eliza looked to her husband, then back at the Wickhams. "He goes to face his wife before the bishop on Thursday. He doesn't expect her to challenge him, this being her idea, but he has every reason to dread the experience. It is best to approach him cautiously; he does not want people around to witness his suffering. He'll give in to Georgie's insistence on seeing him eventually, but so far he has staved her off."

George remembered, and noted to later tell his wife, that Georgie was one of the few people Edmund would listen to, and vice versa. "Please let Edmund know we wish to support him in any way we can. He may not admit to wanting it, but he should hear it all the same."

The Turners nodded in agreement.

*******************************************

The next day they called on the Franklin house, where Isabel was overjoyed at the appearance of her brother. "The north has been good to you."

"They do say fresh air is good medicine," he replied.

Edward Franklin was a rambunctious three-year-old, with his father's adventurous spirit, and asked all kinds of questions about the north. He was reluctant to share the floor with his baby sister, who was barely a year old but already spouting plenty of nonsense words and several that sounded suspiciously like 'Mama' and 'Papa.' She sat in Cynthia's lap for a long time as Edward entertained them with his oratory abilities, stumbling his way through retelling his own, confused version of a popular fairy tale with occasional help from his father.

With some reluctance on both sides, the children were sent up to the Nursery, and refreshments were set out for the adults.

"I'm so glad you've come," Isabel confessed to her brother. "It's been so dreary here, avoiding all suspicious social engagements, and we are invited to a great deal of them, all because Saul and Edmund bought that stock together last year."

"That now being the most significant thing about my character." Saul had a sad smile. "It will all pass – painfully, for Edmund, but it will. Until then, we can only pray for a speedy resolution."

Isabel wanted to hear all about Lancashire, and the Darcy children. William and Edward were the same age, and when they were together they got along fabulously. Edward was of a gentler disposition, but they were still boys and they could make a mess of things when they wanted to. George made another mental note to hint to Geoffrey that the Franklins might like their own invitation to Lancashire.

At the end of their visit, with uncustomary graveness, Saul Franklin pulled George aside while the women were still chatting. "When will you see Edmund?"

"Tomorrow, possibly. It depends on his schedule, which is more critical than mine."

"I do not think he is well."

George merely motioned for him to continue.

"I do not mean to imply he is ill with some disease, but this process has devastated him. No one's wanted to say anything to him directly, but Eliza Turner told me he eats little and sleeps less. I think you will see it immediately, having been gone a month now."

"I have no doubt the process of public humiliation and separation from one's wife, however little you wish to remain attached to her, is draining. Nonetheless I am grateful for your notice and I will try to see Edmund as soon as possible."

*******************************************

The opportunity to see Edmund came early the very next day, when they were invited to call on the Bingley house. Charles greeted them, with Eliza and Mr. Turner present, but Edmund was delayed with his lawyer. His ecclesiastical trial was only two days away, so he could not be expected to have the patience for a social call, and he was taking his meals in the study.

He appeared only at the last moment. From the look on his face, the meeting had not been easy, and he asked for a moment to recover himself before receiving his guests, which was politely granted. He reappeared not looking much better, but bowed with all politeness. "Dr. Wickham. Mrs. Wickham."

George and Edmund were not in constant contact with each other, but enough that it was easy to notice the marked difference in Edmund's countenance. He was too thin, and he hid his sunken face behind a shortly-trimmed beard. "Hello, Edmund."

"Mr. Edmund," his wife said.

"You're looking well," Edmund said to his cousin. "How was Lancashire?"

"Beautiful. You ought to go some time."

"And my sister?"

"Very well. She sends her regards. They all do. You should see Brian – he looks very much like you did as a child. And just as shy."

This at least brought a little color to his face. "He is my nephew."

Edmund complimented Cynthia without mentioning her condition, and made some small talk concerning the one Bingley sibling not present (Georgiana). They had tea, and as the Wickhams were officially preparing to end their stay, Charles finally maneuvered Edmund and George alone in a room together.

"I suppose you are here to assess me." Edmund's more usual candor was his last defense.

"That is not the only reason," George insisted. "You're not sleeping."

"In two days I will denounce my wife before a bishop and, no doubt, several members of the press and other social gossips with the right connections to be present. I will go into explicit detail about all of the ways she has wronged me by carrying on with my own manservant, and how she is carrying his child and not mine because I was an inattentive and downright idiotic husband. That said, do you expect me to find peaceful rest?"

"You may collapse out of exhaustion," George said, "and that will hardly aid your cause, especially if it happens in court. For the sake of time, may we skip to the end of the long argument and reach the point where you agree to take something to help you sleep?"

"I will not dope myself."

"You shall be quite all right when you wake, I assure you. I take it myself on occasion, and you know how paranoid _I_ am." This, Edmund could not contest, and George put a few packets from his coat pocket in Edmund's hand. "Pour one packet in with a glass of milk before bed. You can use liquor as well, if you prefer, but it is not my recommendation. I will send more when I have it ground up."

Edmund grumbled. "I am doing this because I have no time to argue with you, and for no other reason."

"That is reason enough." George patted him on the arm. "Good luck."

Edmund looked up at him with tired eyes and said, "Even if it's luck, I don't know how _good_ it is."

*******************************************

Dinner was at the Turner house. Mrs. Turner kept an excellent chef and it was a chance to bring all her children together. Cynthia and Matthew's younger sister, Maria, was still not out but now sat at the dinner table with them, picking at her food. With a daughter and daughter-in-law both expecting, the widow Mrs. Turner's mood was darkened only by one thing, and she did not bring it up at the dinner table. She waited until later, until George began to think he was in the clear, before she pulled both of them aside.

"Doctor," which was what she always called George, "I'm sure _you_ will see reason."

"Mrs. Turner, you will have to clarify as to what I am being unreasonable about."

"Mama, we are not hiding in Sussex," Cynthia said. "George is Edmund's physician."

"All the more reason!"

"Despite our _great love_ of balls," George said, "we are willing to resist the urge to throw ourselves back into the social world of the Ton not just because of Cynthia's condition but also to protect the family name, which has not yet been besmirched and I doubt will be just because Edmund and I share a grandfather. We do not abandon family, especially at such a critical time."

"Moreover," Cynthia continued, "I think withdrawing from society and closing George's practice would only draw attention to ourselves, where otherwise we might not be noticed at all."

Mrs. Turner conceded. "You will be private about your visits. It is bad enough Matthew is living there – "

"We will be private. It is a family matter, Mama."

"If only the world thought that, darling."

*******************************************

George Wickham returned home only to leave quickly again on an emergency call, which turned out only to be someone with a very bad cold who needed rest, and perhaps time away from her overexcited mother. By the time he was back at his house, only the butler remained awake to greet him. He poured himself half a glass of whiskey and climbed the stairs, past the room they hoped would soon be a nursery and to the mistress's bedchambers.

Cynthia was in bed, but awake and reading. "George. Are you done for the evening?"

"I do hope so." He removed his vest and sat down on the end of the bed. "Your mother was in good spirits, all things considered."

"She has the prospect of not one but two grandchildren. While she is not one to be ecstatic, if she was, I would not blame her."

George grinned, sipping his drink and slowly changing into his bedclothes before collapsing next to her. He pried one of her hands off the book and kissed her palm. "What are you reading?"

"A book Georgiana gave me."

"A novel?"

"A book of instructions on being a proper wife in modern society."

"You are joking."

She opened the book and held it up to him. "You will notice her annotations."

He took the book and held it closer to the light. It was a long list of specific behaviors a wife must perfect, according to the author. Georgie had taken the liberty of writing "Don't" in blue ink at the beginning of every sentence. "And what do you think of her commentary?"

"It is clear and concise. Though I do not believe the author would appreciate being undermined, I've no intention of telling him."

He laughed and placed the book on her stomach, which was a bit larger than it had been a few months ago. "I will give her points for brevity, but one questions why she did not just burn the book."

"George! You do not burn books."

"Yes, you meticulously denounce them with an injected interpretation."

"It is less violent."

"That is not a comment I would expect to hear if concerning Georgiana, but I cannot say I disapprove," he said with a sly grin. "I can only beg that if there is a section on the behavior of a proper wife in respects to submitting to one's husband, you take it with more than a single grain of salt."

"If I submitted to the author's advice, your life would be very predicable but very boring."

"Then we are in agreement with Georgie on its literary worth."

She kissed him. "I think we are."

At least for that evening, their marriage did not require any further instruction.

...Next Chapter - Bed From Board


	9. Bed From Board

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Notes:** Just wanted to let everyone know that book 2 is coming out August 1st, and is "The Price of Family" under a different name. So if you've read that story, and you buy it, you will get the same story with less historical and grammatical errors. Book 3, which is "Left to Follow" has significant changes to it and will be out Feb 2010.

Up next: Mugen! Well, a letter from and a scene with, but he's still in Okinawa.

* * *

Chapter 9 - Bed From Board

"I do not know whether it is a crisis of conscience or a failure of will," Edmund said, "but I cannot do it."

He stopped pacing the study to look at Charles. His eyes were red and his arms crossed in a not-so-quiet ferocity, aimed squarely at himself.

"I still love her," he whispered, as if there was anyone to overhear the three of them. Edmund looked to Eliza, then back at his brother, and resumed his pacing. "Maybe not as much as the day of our marriage, or it's some delusion dreamt up in my own frustration, but I cannot release myself from the attachment. I _need to_ release myself and I can't."

"Though we may pretend otherwise, we are not truly masters of our emotions," Charles said. "That is why they are _emotions_. Nonetheless we are willed into doing things which run contrary to them."

"From everything you have told me," Eliza offered, "this divorce is what Lucy wants, what the other man in her life wants, and what, however painful, is best for you. You are not betraying her by doing what is best for the both of you."

"I took an oath. Before G-d and man..."

"The man I would consider our family expert on G-d took many oaths which he violated, but he made his peace with it, and now Mr. Grégoire is a very happy man for an excommunicated monk and an adulterer."

This stopped his pacing. "How dare you! Mrs. Bellamont was a widow."

"You are too young to remember," Eliza said, "but he knew her before she was a widow. She was estranged from her husband and she did not tell him she was married. When he found out, they separated, and reunited after her husband died."

"We don't speak of it because it isn't polite and because Patrick might still not know," Charles explained, "but it is the truth. And I do not think, given his nature, that Mr. Grégoire would resent us telling it now if it would aid you, but he once had to face Mrs. Bellamont's husband – and he was the man who had wronged him."

Edmund frowned. "You're making this up."

"We're not." It was Eliza who said it. Edmund paled, but did not protest again. "I suppose what we're trying to say is, even the best men who think they have the greatest understanding of G-d have been known to intentionally or unintentionally break their oaths, and on occasion, they go on to live happy lives. G-d does not strike them down."

"We all know G-d does not strike people down for their sins," Charles said, "myself being a living example. So one oath, taken under circumstances that have changed significantly without your intention, I think will be easily forgiven if it even _needs_ to be forgiven." He shook his head. "Besides, Lucy is the one who should be praying for forgiveness right now, if we must discuss theology."

Edmund sighed and collapsed in the desk chair. "That does not change it, does it? Even if I absolve myself of my own wedding vows, and beg to be released of them, and even if I have every ground on which to do so, it cannot make me not despise myself for it."

"A despicable person would not seek an expensive, complicated, and socially damning divorce," Charles insisted. "He would not already have well-compensated Parliament members lined up to free his wife to marry again quickly so her child is not born a bastard. He would not offer to pay all of her legal fees even though it is he who is so thoroughly wronged. He might denounce her, he might force her give up the child, but he would not take steps to insure her future happiness." He added, "You are a good man, Edmund. You are willing to do the right thing, however much it pains you."

"I am not! That is the problem. I am weak and afraid. There – I said it. I am guilty of admitting it. _I don't want to do this_." He wiped his eyes. "But I must."

"Edmund, I have never seen you shy away from any duty, real or perceived," Eliza said gently. "I do not expect you to do so now. You can be frightened – certainly on this awful morning – but I do not doubt it will prevent you from doing the right thing."

"How do I know it is the right thing?"

"You've spent weeks assessing it and it was your conclusion," Charles said. "We all agree with you."

"We all support you. Mama and Papa would be here if you wanted them to be."

On this Edmund was adamant. "No. Leave them untainted by this." He sighed. "I suppose I must, and I am only delaying it. Eliza, I cannot ask you to come."

"I will."

"Then I beg of you not to come. In your delicate condition – "

"It is not so delicate! I am barely a month along."

He took her hands. "Please. I will worry less if you are not there."

"Then at least listen to Charles and let him go with you."

Edmund did not have the energy to argue anymore. He was already exhausted, and the day had hardly begun. "Very well." He let her hug him. "Thank you."

"Anytime, Edmund." That was all she needed to say.

*******************************************

At St. George's, which was unfortunately the same diocese where they had been married, Edmund and Lucy Bingley arrived in the early afternoon to appear before the be-robed bishop, the acting Chancellor for the trial. Though church was dismissed and the court in a smaller and more private room, that did not prevent it from being packed by onlookers. Edmund swallowed and looked over at Lucy's table. Richards was absent; he didn't need to be present with the ruling of the criminal court.

Lucy wasn't showing, at least not in what she was wearing. She had, as usual, impeccable taste, though she was dressed appropriately somber.

"Edmund." She rose when he approached her.

"Lucy." He had to whisper, so the crowd couldn't hear. "Seeing as how we have a mutual interest in today's success despite our mutual humiliation, do you have any recommendations?"

"Shave," she said, to which he growled. "There. Look angry, not sad. We can't have you weeping before the bishop."

"I am not a man to weep."

"If you want to stand by that claim, don't let anyone see your eyes."

He turned away, balling his fists so to crumple his notes. "I wanted this to end well."

"You want everything to go well, Edmund, but you must take steps to make sure it happens."

"I do not deserve to be lectured by _you_, nor should I have to remind you who is the guilty party."

"We both had a share in this disaster of a marriage, and I am about to shoulder the entirety of the blame. How can you, with the little bit of you that does understand me, not expect me to fight for my self-respect just because you are incapable of doing so yourself?"

"I still love you," he blurted.

There was a pause before she continued, as if it had some impact. "At least don't say it in front of the judge."

He could look at her no more. He stared down at his notes until they stood for the arrival of the bishop. Before him came the apparitor, carrying the ceremonial, bejeweled mace, and then the bishop himself in his judicial robes, followed by the deputy chancellor, who waited for the bishop to take his seat. "This Venerable Court will now consider the case of Mr. Edmund Bingley, who would charge his wife, Mrs. Lucy Bingley, with adultery."

"Your Worshipful Sir," Edmund's lawyer said, "Mr. Bingley would like to present Sir with the evidence and the documents of the ruling from the criminal court." He put the papers on the bench before the bishop, who put on his very tiny spectacles and spent a painfully long time (at least for Edmund) looking over the documents.

"Mr. Bingley," the bishop said.

"Yes, Sir."

"You have accused a Mr. Richards, previously employed as your manservant – " which earned considerable snickers from the crowd behind them, " – of no less than thirty-four perverse acts with your wife." Another round of suppressed laughter. "Mr. Richards did not contest a single charge. The records show he also paid the fine." He shifted, which was difficult in his massive robe and wig, and considering his age. "Mrs. Bingley, how would you dispute these charges?"

"I do not dispute them, Sir."

"You would swear by the number?"

"I do not recall the actual number, as I was not counting at the time, but I would not dispute it. Thirty-four does not seem unreasonable to me and Robert was always better with the mundane details."

Edmund shut his eyes, as if that would do something to drown out the laughter. The bishop banged hard on his gavel, and did not need to say why he was doing so to obtain the desired results.

"Mr. Bingley."

"Sir."

"You would also accuse your wife of being with child by her lover. Before I dissolve a holy matrimony in which a child may be born out of wedlock and therefore be denied entrance to heaven, for the sake of its and our own soul, can you be absolutely sure there is no possibility it is yours?"

Edmund swallowed. "Yes, Sir."

"You have on no occasion been with your wife in the last...," he had to look at his notes, "four months."

"I have not, Sir."

"Five, to be perfectly sure."

"I have not been with my wife this year, Sir."

"Mrs. Bingley."

"Yes, Sir."

"I assume you would not dispute this. May I remind you that you took a sacred oath before G-d and man to love and obey the man beside you, and that you claim not only to have broken that oath but repeatedly, and to the point where physical evidence is present and a bastard may be born from your unholy union?"

She did not hesitate. "I am aware of the oath I took to my husband, and had he fulfilled his oath to love me in any adequate sense, extreme measures would not have been necessary."

Edmund's face went red to the noise, but the bishop was not interested. "Answer the question, Mrs. Bingley."

"I am with child, Sir, and not by my husband, as he has not had concern or occasion to lay with me for a year at least."

"Sir – "

"Mr. Bingley, you were not called on!" the bishop responded. "If you wish to change your answer concerning the length of your period of apparent celibacy, you may, but only when you are called on to do so. May I remind you both that this is a serious matter of both G-dly and worldly law!"

"Yes, Sir."

"Yes, Sir."

"The necessity of specifics is crucial to your very souls, and the soul of Mrs. Bingley's unborn child. Now you will obey procedure and answer questions when you are asked, and as expediently as possible." He looked at Edmund. "Mr. Bingley, I must comment that you have not sought out the more spiritually recommendable course of annulment."

"I have no grounds for an annulment, Sir."

"Mrs. Bingley?"

"He is not impotent, Sir. Would I not also seek an annulment and spare my dignity if I could? But if you ask me to swear before G-d that I was never with my husband, if not several times, in the first year of our marriage, I could not. In the beginning, he had the enthusiasm to be a _competent_ husband."

The bishop was quick to his gavel, because even the court servants were snickering. Edmund turned. "You have to make it worse."

"I do what I am forced to do."

"Mr. Bingley! Mrs. Bingley!"

They bowed.

"Now I am sure this painful situation has sparked no small amount of contention between you," the bishop said, "but we are not here because you no longer care for each other; we are here to protect the sanctimony of the institution of marriage and establish that this is not some attempt to circumvent the system, and that these somewhat wild accounts of adultery are in fact true. Mr. Bingley."

"Yes, Sir."

"I cannot help but notice that on several of these occasions that were mentioned in the criminal court, where your wife was in a promiscuous and unholy union with your own valet, you were in your very house at the time. How do you explain such a thing?"

He looked to his lawyer, but there was no help there. "Sir – I do not know how I can explain it."

"By answering the question, Mr. Bingley."

"I – I was in another part of the house!"

It took a full minute of heavy banging and even some people being cast from the room before they could achieve some respectful silence again. Edmund looked over his shoulder at his brother, who could only look sympathetic.

The bishop had a somewhat similar expression, so obvious was Edmund's shame when he was not on trial. "Mr. Bingley, I am only trying to truly establish the facts of the matter. If you wish to continue to claim ignorance to your wife's devious machinations, you may do so, if that is the true and accurate account."

"It is, Sir. Unfortunately."

"You are aware that you will be required to supply your wife with some supplementary income should the marriage be dissolved."

"I am aware, Sir, and I am prepared to pay for her comfort."

"Do you have anything further to add?"

"Not at this time, Sir."

The bishop looked to Lucy. "Mrs. Bingley, you come from a family of some minor distinction. What was your inheritance?"

"Twenty thousand pounds, Sir."

"And you understand that by your actions, which if true, are heinous crimes against G-d, you have forfeited that inheritance and cannot expect a settlement to provide you with a life of luxury."

"I understand, Sir." In actuality, that was the sum of their private agreement, but there was no need for the bishop to know that. It was an unreasonably high sum, but it bought Edmund her compliance.

The bishop sighed. "In the face of the considerable evidence and the decision of the criminal court, I must grant the verdict of _mensa et thoro_. Your marriage is hereby dissolved, though neither of you may remarry without a Parliamentary Act. Failing to do so, any children you have will be considered bastards in the eyes of G-d. Mr. Bingley, you are ordered to pay...," he had to squint at his notes again, "Miss Hartford a sum of no less than six hundred pounds as a settlement. This court is dismissed." He banged his gavel, and it came down like a blow to Edmund's heart. '_Mensa et thoro_,' the desired verdict, meant "from bed and board." Even a child from their own union would now be a bastard. He felt lightheaded, and barely held himself up long enough for the bishop to leave, whereupon he collapsed in his chair. The crowd, gossiping amongst themselves, were pushed out, and he looked up to see Lucy looking down on him with a mixed expression on her face.

"You have what you wanted," he said. "Most of it, anyway. I am not completely bankrupted, but my humiliation, I pray, is complete, as I cannot take any more of it."

"And my lifelong humiliation begins," she said. "So allow me some small victory, however undignified. It is all I have."

"That and twenty thousand pounds, plus your legal fees."

"As you are perhaps now learning, money cannot buy happiness," she said. "Goodbye, Edmund."

He could not help it. His voice matched hers, and was soft. "Goodbye, Lucy."

She curtseyed and he rose to bow. As she left, she passed Charles, who bowed. "Miss Hartford." She did not even respond. He followed her, then returned to the courtroom, where after some brief words with his lawyer, Edmund was alone. "She's sobbing."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" he said, with no malice to Charles. He had not the energy for it. "Charles, take me home." Because, as implied, he could not imagine making the journey himself.

*******************************************

Somehow Charles not only discovered Edmund's favorite dish (duck, roasted in a particular way) but procured it, and sent it up to his room. Edmund almost felt guilty for having no appetite, and for the first time since his arrival, sat up in bed and made some attempt to pick at it before ultimately leaving it to grow cold beside the other dishes and drinks set for him. He was not hungry, he was not thirsty, and he was tired but he was not sleepy.

"Mr. Edmund," his new manservant said, somewhere in the background, "you have a visitor."

"Send them away."

There was some commotion, and someone wearing what could only be one of those massive dresses sat on the edge of the bed.

"I am not receiving visitors."

"And if you would only look up, you would realize you are talking to someone who says and does as she damn well pleases."

He did turn enough so that he could see her. "Georgie." He had to sit up, enough to embrace her. "I suppose asking what you are doing here is more of a rhetorical question."

"Yes."

"Is Geoffrey with you?"

"He stayed in the north with the children – except Brian, who would just cry the entire time I'm gone. I don't know why I bothered; he cried the whole way on the train anyway, but at least he's braver than Uncle Darcy in that respect and actually went on it. And now he's exhausted, but later he will be awake and fussy and very eager to see you."

"Does he really look like me?"

"He doesn't have a beard. Also he's a baby."

He smiled. "You know what I mean."

"He has that Bingley Irish hair, yes. As to our demeanor, that remains to be seen, and tends to vary wildly between Bingley siblings." She picked up the plate, and held it in front of him. "Eat."

"Does it matter to you at all that I'm not hungry?"

"No."

He took the plate from her, set it on his lap, and picked up the fork. She wasn't satisfied until food was going in his mouth.

"I'm doing this because I'm forced."

"I know."

"I'm still not hungry."

"I know."

"I may even get sick from this food."

"I know."

"How does Geoffrey put up with you?"

"I don't know."

The food was the same temperature of the room, but it was still fantastic. By the end of it, he was scraping it off the plate, and washing it down with wine. "When did you arrive? Not long ago, I assume."

"An hour, maybe more," she said. "I won't insult you by asking you how you feel. I will make my presumptions."

"They are probably correct."

She put a hand on his cheek. "You are a good man. You may not at the moment believe it, and you may not always act like it, but it is a definition I will stand behind, and not just because you're my brother."

"I have a question that will challenge that assumption," he said. "Is it true that Mr. Grégoire was with his wife when she was still married to a previous husband, and another man was the wronged person?"

She did not expect the question, clearly, but she did not hesitate to answer it. "Yes, I believe so. No one's discussed it in years, but I did pry it out of Papa at one point or another. Mr. Grégoire didn't know, of course. She didn't tell him she was married."

"And the husband died."

"He was hanged."

Edmund raised an eyebrow.

"In his rage he tried to murder his wife and he stabbed her, killing his own unborn child. According to George, who got it from Uncle Darcy, Mr. Grégoire was the one to plead for mercy for her husband, which was why his execution was private and not public. Mrs. Bellamont mourned him for three months and the day she left black, Mr. Grégoire proposed." She took the plate from him and set it aside. "The husband was a terrible man, which was why she ran from him in the first place and lied about being married to protect herself. And yet Mr. Grégoire will still not curse him, because he's the man he is. So I suppose, it's not always clear, even when it should be. Even in absolute matters like marriage and murder."

"Some men would argue they are one in the same."

"Edmund! Did you make a joke?"

He blushed. "I might have."

"And I was warned you were on the brink of despair. Clearly Charles was exaggerating."

Now he did not smile. "He has been so kind to me."

"What do you expect? All quarrels aside, Charles is kind to everyone except himself, and he is your older brother. If he had not immediately sheltered you there would have been a line of people for him to answer to, and I might not have even been in front of it." She added, "Whatever came between you and Miss Hartford, she was very foolish to burn her bridges with you. She cannot expect the reception in her own family that she would have had if there were some reconciliation. She did not play her cards very wisely."

"She got what she wanted," he said, "and I didn't get hanged. So, I suppose, it has gone well, but I suspect it will be a long time before I _feel_ as though it did."

Georgie gave him a reassuring smile. "We're willing to wait."

...Next Chapter - Emun and Gen-san


	10. Emun and Gensan

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Notes:** Little background here as a reminder: Mugen is living in the Ryukyu Islands, which are small islands between Japan and Taiwan inhabited by an indigenous people but controlled by Japan. Mugen himself is half islander and half Japanese, though he left his island too young to remember which one and is an orphan of both cultures. The Ryukyuans have a seperate culture, language, and religion from Japan, though they are heavily influenced by both Japan and China by trade ships.

* * *

Chapter 10 - Emun and Gen-san

Despite his exhaustion, and his liberal application of alcohol, Edmund Bingley could not sleep. Before resorting to George's cure, he decided to take one more turn about the house, and was momentarily surprised to hear noises coming from his old Nursery before remembering it had a new occupant. Candle in hand, he knocked on the door, and waited for a response.

"Come."

The room was not well lit, so the candle helped. Georgiana was barefoot and dressed in one of her Japanese dressing gowns. She paced back and forth beside the cradle, Brian Darcy in her arms.

"Don't you have a nurse to do that, or is she also in Lancashire?"

"Brian doesn't want a nurse," she said. "He wants his mother, and he is particular in his preferences and young enough that I still indulge him." She stopped in front of Edmund. "Do you want to hold him? He's not falling asleep anyway."

"I shouldn't."

"Why? Is insomnia infectious?" She placed Brian in his arms before Edmund could do much about it. He was heavy, but not too much, and still small enough that he could be held and rest his head comfortably on a shoulder. He did not, and instead pulled at Edmund's tie anxiously.

"He doesn't recognize you. Of course he probably won't recognize his father if we're away long enough," Georgie said. "Brian, this is your Uncle Edmund. Do you want to say hello to your uncle?"

Despite himself, Edmund was amused. "Can you say it? Can you say Edmund?"

"He's not speaking yet."

He looked down at the little face, now smiling back at him and pulling on his tie as if it was a pull cord. "Say it. _Edmund_."

"_Emun_."

"Edmund."

"Ememun."

"You were closer the first time. Edmund."

"Emun!"

He grinned. "Very good." But when he looked up, he only saw shock on Georgie's face. "What is it? What's so terrible?"

"It is not terrible – I am just ... That is the closest he's come to saying anyone's name." She kissed Brian's cheek. "My baby."

"Emun!"

"I believe he's broken his vow of silence," Edmund said triumphantly. "Now you may never get him to shut up." But from the candlelight, he could see the tears glistening in her eyes. "Do you want him back?"

"No! Not if he's talking in your arms, no. Oh, I love you." She kissed Brian repeatedly, and the attention of two adults resulted in one very happy – and ultimately, tired – toddler. She would not accept him back, and even insisted that Edmund be the one to place him in his cradle. "My baby."

He could not recall seeing Georgie so emotional over her children. He never doubted that she was, at least inside, but that did not mean he had seen it – not since Alison's birth, and that was before his marriage, and his estrangement from the family. He was there for William's baptism, but not for long afterward. He was there for Brian's, but he was not named godfather, nor did he expect to be with the cool relations via his ongoing argument with Charles, however little they actually argued. But the little boy smiled all the same and said his name. "Emun."

"Almost there." He pulled the blanket up over him. "Goodnight."

"_O-yasumi nasai, Brian-chan_," Georgie said, kissing him a final time on both hands and toes before giving him his stuffed rabbit and turning away. "The rest of the family speaks Japanese, so he might as well learn it."

"We wouldn't want him at a disadvantage."

"Certainly not."

*******************************************

Freed of his apparent vow of silence, Brian Darcy's speech came on rapidly, if a bit free-flowing and almost always incoherent. Georgiana immediately expressed regret that Geoffrey was not present, but he would see him soon enough. She remedied some of her anxiety by writing an ever-increasing list of attempted words (mostly names) to be mailed post-haste to Lancashire as if it were a matter of deadly importance.

"Ba!" Brian shouted, pointing to the doorman as he carried out the letter. His other arm kept a tight grip on his mother's sleeve.

"Is that Japanese for the post?" Charles asked.

"No, it's just 'ba.'" She returned to the sunroom. "Who knows what it means? Isn't that right, Brian? Do you have anything to say to your mother? Mama?"

"Mama!" He gestured to Edmund on the sofa. "Emun!"

"Very well," Edmund said, putting aside his papers and accepting Brian in his lap.

"Why are you the only other person he recognizes?" There was a hint of jealousy in Charles' voice.

"Because he looks like Georgie," Eliza said, and hit her husband with a fan when he snickered. "Their hair is the same color and length. What does he know?"

"There are some key differences," Edmund grumbled. "Though I'm sure your habit of dressing like a Japanese man does not aid the situation."

"Hush! He so rarely sees that," Georgie said. "Do you, Brian?" Her son giggled in response.

There was nothing on the schedule for the day but dinner with the Maddoxes. Edmund saw his lawyer only for a few minutes, and otherwise rested or relaxed. They kept the mood light, and the papers far away from him. Only Charles and Matthew had the courage to read them in full, but neither offered comment. The bell rang all day, but they were "not at home" and the cards were left in a basket, and another one when the first was filled. No one was looking for Edmund Bingley, of course – they were just seeking to renew their lifelong friendship, somehow lapsed, with Charles Bingley or Eliza Turner.

"You will look downright rude to refuse these," Charles said, handing Eliza her basket.

"They were downright rude to leave them. They know I'm not in Town and if I was, I wouldn't be seeing old friends."

"Maybe you should go to Sussex."

"When is the bill going to go before Parliament?"

"Hopefully before it closes for the season," Charles said, which meant July. "I would say, within reason, a calculated guess of a month. You have time to leave and come back."

"I'll discuss it with Matthew, but I don't want to. Would you?"

"I cannot."

"If you could?"

He frowned. "Of course not."

Nonetheless it was not an easy wait for any of them. They were largely prisoners of the Bingley house, with a few outings to the Maddoxes to escape the tedium. They also wrote excessively, and welcomed the arrival of letters from what seemed to them the outside world.

One package arrived that was from the very outside world. "Mrs. Darcy," the butler said to Georgie, interrupting her sewing. "This arrived from the Darcy house." It was closed, but her mail was redirected.

She recognized the careful brown packaging immediately. "Thank you." She tore through the wrapper to find a box and a letter, written on English paper, now yellowed with age. "It's from Mugen," she said to her curious sister. She held up the letter, with the Japanese letters in bold strokes of ink.

"Will you read it to me, if it's not too personal?"

"Of course." But she could not focus on the letter, as was proper, and opened the box instead. There was a small object inside, carefully wrapped in thick silk. As she unrolled it, she found it was brocaded, and a tapestry unto itself. Georgie laid it across the writing table so they both could see it.

Eliza gasped at the black demon-like, six-armed creature sitting on a red throne and carrying a sword. Above it were two black crows. "Why would anyone want that?"

"It's Mahakala," Georgie said. "The demon protector of Tibet."

"Where is Tibet?"

"Next to India." She unrolled the bottom to reveal a small bronze idol. It seemed familiar, but she couldn't place it. This was a more neutral figure, obviously a standing woman with one hand raised in blessing like old images of Jesus. She scanned the letter, but it was long and complicated. Finally she said, "It's Kwan Yin. She's like a goddess of compassion in China or something."

"Does Mr. Mugen usually send you idols?"

"No, not usually." It took her some time, with Mugen's grammar, to decipher the letter.

_Dear Jorgi-chan,_

_I hope this letter reaches you and you are well, also because I cannot replace what is in the package. I hope it comes and is not stolen. _

_I hope naming your next son Brian will not be unlucky. Brian-san is unlucky gambler, unlucky health, unlucky as samurai. He is very lucky to have a wife like Nadi-sama. She saves him many times. So maybe your son will be lucky, marry tough woman like Nadi-sama and she will protect him and occasionally hit him very hard, preferably on head. I am kidding. She only did that once that I know I was there for. _

_Want to send your children something, but I have only candy, and it is from British traders, so you must have better candy there. Also Jeffrey-san hates Japanese food and they are his children so probably them too, maybe not Alison. I did not understand words on letter from her but the drawing is hanging on my wall. I had to move it because man came over, made fun of me for silly drawing, now he has limp and I had to apologize to his wife. _

_Now idol. How it comes to you I will let you know yourself, but how it came to me, I can tell you._

*******************************************

The bell woke him, striking the inside of his head with its powerful gong. Why didn't they warn him not to drink before the traders came? Mugen groaned and rolled over, putting a blanket over his head and laying still for some time. If they needed him, let them come get him.

He remained that way for some time before rising, dressing and stumbling outside. The garden needed work; unfortunately he had no desire to do it and would have to hire someone. He sighed and washed his face.

"Moo Shin."

The man ducked in time to escape the dagger, but to be honest, Mugen hadn't thrown it with particular care. The old man stepped aside and bowed. "Forgive me for intruding," he said in Chinese.

Mugen towered in his geta over the little man and his little grey queue. "What do you want? If it was to kill me, you would have done it already."

"I don't think so highly of myself." The man stood, and pointed to the scar on his cheek, just under his eye. "After all, you gave me this."

"Heh. I think I might have a scar from you, too." So it was a former student, and not a Shaolin. This man didn't look like much of anything, much less a warrior monk. "I never learned your name."

"Kang."

"You've been looking for me for a long time."

"Four years. Since you visited the temple." Kang opened his pack, and began sorting through it. "After Master Hyuu died, we all had to leave. I couldn't imagine another abbot, so I was relieved of my vows and I became a doctor. I grow herbs in town and sell them to traders. Here." He retrieved the item, wrapped in heavy silk, and handed it to Mugen, who decided to accept it. "He said I must give it to you."

Mugen unwrapped the idol. "Kwan Yin." He recognized it instantly; it was the one that rested on Master Hyuu's desk. "That's your sacred task? Giving me a statue?"

"He said you would know what to do with it."

Mugen rewrapped the statue and looked at the bowing Kang, practically prostrating himself before him. "You know many people have come to kill me because I was Master Hyuu's student. I've been hunted all my life. Why should I trust you now, not to give away my location?" He added, "I'm tired of killing monks. The fight is fun but the end result is always so unsatisfying."

"You have my word." Kang stood tall, or as tall as he could. "You don't have to take it, but I'm offering it to you. Do you think Master Hyuu would have given me Kwan Yin and his favorite tapestry, both very expensive, if I wasn't going to carry out my mission? You had so little faith in us, and for good reason at the time, but I am too old to be your rival now."

Mugen thought it over, while Kang waited politely. There were so many clues. "You want to know where she is?"

"Yes."

"I won't tell you. You will have to kill me."

"I do not have to, nor am I capable," Kang replied. "I am sorry you do not trust me, but I can understand. We were not easy on you." He bowed again. "My apologies."

He seemed to mean it. Mugen put the idol away in the fold of his kimono. "Come inside. There's tea."

*******************************************

_I regret giving anything away. Your safety means everything to me. I am happy you are so far away in Pemerli. You could fight them, but it is better life for you now as is._

_Nadi-sama writes, says Brian is sick. Do not tell him I tell story about him. Tell him I think him very courage. It is not a lie._

_All of my love to Alison, Jeffrey, Wilam, Brian. Both Brians._

_Mu Gen._

"Mugen seems like such a sad man."

Georgie put the letter aside and answered her sister, "He's always been lonely, but he's never admitted it."

"That's so awful."

Georgie smiled sadly and turned over the idol, again and again in her hands. "He chose it."

*******************************************

Mugen was re-reading the last letter from Georgie, but it was hard to concentrate with the noise from the village, which the wind carried up to his house on the cliff. Since Kang, his only visitors had been children and people looking for his expertise to speak with traders, as he knew more languages than anyone else on the island - except perhaps the mediums, who spoke in dozens of spirit languages that all sounded like nonsense to him. The men had returned from the races of _Yukka Nu Hii_, the festival of the dragon boats. The local boats were painted red and raced as a tribute to the sea gods, and the men capped off a tiring day with drinking and the priestesses with chanting.

"Gendai!" The drunken weaver lurched at him. "Where were you? What will the sea gods think?"

"That I don't like boats," he said, "which is the truth." He spent too much of his life riding them back and forth to England. He did not say no to a bottle of free sake, and a second. Maybe festivals weren't so bad after all, even if the roaring bonfire was too hot for this time of year and hurt his eyes.

"Gen-san," the priestess said, and took his hand. Considering she was celibate, this was an interesting gesture. "Come."

"You can't tell me what to do," Mugen said, and did it anyway, entering the smoky hut. People were huddled around the _yuta_, the woman acting as a medium. They wanted blessings, healings, and good fortune.

He could barely see the man huddled next to him, partially because of the only light from the small fire and partially because his level of intoxication. "Gendai, come to rid yourself of an evil spirit?"

"I am an evil spirit," he chuckled, and the man laughed. He was fairly sure it was the tavern-keeper.

"_Mabuya, mabuya, utikuyou,_" the yuta said, to reinforce their souls, and prevent the loss of their sacred spirit. The only thing Mugen felt like losing was the remainder of his sobriety, so he worked on finishing the third bottle as the others shuffled in and out. He remained on the bench, and even began to doze until he heard the yuta talking to him. "Mu Gen, Mu Gen."

"Oi, I know my own name."

"_Mabuya, mabuya, utikuyou. Mabuya, mabuya, utikuyou._"

He got off the bench and sat down on the dirt floor across from her. "Do you want to tell my fortune?" She didn't respond; it was so hard to talk to a woman in a trance. She hissed at him. It wasn't intentional – that or she was a terrific actress. "Do you want to do anything? Maybe you should have a drink. You've been shouting nonsense for a long time."

"Look into the flames."

"They play tricks on the eyes," he said. "You only see what you want to see. Or what you don't want to see, but you have to. But they're just flames." He waved his hand over the fire, too fast for it to burn him. "The priestess thinks I'm a wandering spirit. Maybe she wants you to exorcise me."

"_Mabuya, mabuya, utikuyou,_" she repeated. "See long journey."

"I see a woman who needs medical attention."

She hissed – this time, probably intentionally – and threw dirt into the flames, making them jump. "Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva."

"Now you're just confused." Bodhisattva was a Buddhist term. It referred to an enlightened being who remained on earth to help others instead of residing in heaven. "A Bodhisattva is someone who's stayed ... long past their time. But they're Enlightened. Or at least looking for Enlightenment."

"_What do you want to know?_"

"Why am I still here?"

"_Save Bodhisattva, save Bodhisattva._"

"That doesn't make any sense."

"_Lover of Kwan Yin, show some respect!_"

It was as if he'd been struck. He did not know if the medium said it or he just heard it, but he got to his feet a little too quickly, and lurched out to collapse on the ground outside the hut. He might have lain there all night had the priestess not come by, and helped him up. "Did she replenish your spirit?"

"I hope this is not what that feels like," he said. She wasn't strong enough to carry him, and he fell, his porcelain bottle shattering next to him.

When he woke it was much colder, but layers of blanket protected him from the morning chill. It was not the first time he'd woken up in a strange place after drinking too much, and he considered his porch to be a marked improvement over some of the other places, but he did not feel particularly self-congratulatory. A woman was there, the tavern-keeper's daughter, to serve him soup.

"Save the Bodhisattva," he said, one ear tilting over towards the priestess, who he knew was looking on. "That's what she said. If she's right, then no one better get in my G-ddamn way."

...Next Chapter - The Last Temptation of Edmund Bingley


	11. The Last Temptation of Edmund Bingley

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Notes:** For those you not enthralled by the divorce plotline and therefore not commenting, this is the end of it, but not the end of Edmund's storyline in general.

* * *

Chapter 11 - The Last Temptation of Edmund Bingley

After a grueling week of Charles and Edmund politicking as best they could with members of Parliament and barristers who know more, and fearing to venture to public worship, the Bingley family (the younger) made a day trip to Brian and Nadezhda's house, where they were joined by the Maddoxes (also the younger). Danielle Maddox and Brian Darcy were not that far apart in age, and mainly happy playing in the dirt beside the porch, but Stewart Maddox required more sophisticated entertainment. Nadezhda took him out back to show him how to shoot a bow and arrow, which at his age was safer than a rifle. Brian Maddox and Frederick watched on from far behind, in the shade.

"Uncle, did you ever learn how to shoot?" Frederick asked.

Brian chuckled. "Of course. I'm a samurai, and archery is very important to samurai warfare – or was, when they actually had wars. They were and still are extremely well-trained at archery on horseback. But I was terrible at it, so I don't miss it." He didn't have to say that the strain on his back was too much. "Nadezhda always made a fool of me anyway, even with a shotgun. Hunting is a very popular sport in Transylvania. She learned as a child. It was one of the few things she was permitted to do."

"Have you ever thought about going back, and claiming your title?"

"I don't think I have much claim on it. And besides, we have only a few fond memories of the place, and many terrible ones." Brian sighed, and picked up his pipe. It was long and white, and now had only tobacco, which he said was very popular in Japan. "Nady might go back, after I die, and see her uncle and her mother's grave. I'd like her to be buried beside me, but really she's free to do as she pleases, and she's young yet."

They watched another arrow fly. Stewart's only went a few feet, and Nadezhda's usually hit the target with such force as to knock it over. When Brian clapped, she shouted back, "I don't see you running to help me pick it back up!"

"She's talking to you," he said to Frederick.

"No she isn't."

"Young man, where are your manners?"

Frederick grumbled and ran to help Nadezhda, who glared at her husband. He avoided her eyes.

On the other side of the house, the younger Brian was testing out his new words, with help from everyone. "Danny!" It was the first name he got completely right.

Danny Maddox smiled. "Very good, Master Brian."

"Uncle Danny!" Danielle Maddox said in a bit for attention, and grabbed on to his sandal, accidentally pulling it off.

"Danielle!" Heather said from her armchair up on the porch. "No. Give that back to your uncle." She watched her daughter hesitate, holding up her prize. "I know you can understand me. Give it back."

But Danny just laughed and found his goddaughter's head, kissed her on it, and accepted his shoe, setting it on the porch. "Thank you, Miss Maddox."

"Maddy," Brian said before tumbling over. He wasn't steady on his feet for long periods of time yet. Before he hit the ground, Danny's cane whipped out and caught him, propping Brian up until he could find his feet again and crawl far enough to reach his mother.

Georgie picked him up. "How do you do that?"

"Practice," was all Danny said with a smirk on his face.

*******************************************

Not a day after their return, Charles knocked on the door to the study, which Edmund was using. "You have someone who wishes an audience."

"Who is it?"

"Mrs. Hartford."

Edmund dismissed the servants. "Send her in, but would you mind staying on the other side of the door?"

"I'll get Georgie if you want her."

"I don't think this calls for that kind of measure," he said, and Charles did as requested. Edmund rose and bowed to the well-dressed guest, who was fanning herself against the summer heat and against her own obvious agitation. "Mrs. Hartford." He had, at one time, enjoyed relatively good terms with his ex-mother-in-law. He saw less of her as he saw less of Lucy, caught up in his paperwork and his failing marriage. "To what do I owe the honor?" He gestured for her to sit, but she did not.

"I'll get right to it, Mr. Bingley. I'm sure you're a very busy man."

"That I am."

"My late husband had many contacts in the House of Lords. My cousin is a former MP, though he does not wield as much influence as he once did, obviously. I think we would agree that it is in both our interests that the divorce bill is passed, and as expediently as possible." After all, she had an increasing, unwed and un-weddible daughter on her hands.

"On that I would most certainly agree, and would welcome your aid," Edmund said. "If you would like the information for my lawyer, who is in charge – "

"I know your lawyer, Mr. Bingley. It is not exactly a secret," she said, and nothing else.

Edmund paused, giving her ample time before saying, "What is the price? You are already bankrupting me when we should be pooling resources."

"You will find it very reasonable," she said. "You have pledged to return my daughter's dowry of twenty thousand pounds for her compliance in the proceedings, and she has complied, and now she will suffer for it."

"This is true. It was the requested amount and I granted it."

"You granted it to my daughter," she said, "and she said she expects it transferred to an account in her name by the end of the month. She also said that no one else's name would be on the account." She finally met his eyes, having otherwise been unwilling to do so. "You will not repeat this, but Lucy plans to move to the south of France when this is over."

"A reasonable decision." As she would never be accepted in London again. She was already housebound by the collective disapproval of society.

"She also plans to marry her lover, and has made no secret of it to me."

The money would go far in France, if she chose her lodgings wisely. They could live off the money for the rest of their lives. Lucy would be living a far less decadent life and Richards, far above the standard of living he could hope to achieve as a manservant. He was probably thrilled. Edmund only said, "He is the father."

"Not if they don't marry. Then it's just a bastard child. There's no reason for an attachment. She can have more." Now she did sit, but did not break her gaze. "I have a business contact in Nova Scotia who is doing very well for himself – five thousand a year. His father served in the same regiment as my husband in the fight with the French and our families have been friends ever since. This man is just five years her senior."

Edmund bit his lip. "I assume Miss Hartford does not find this situation so agreeable."

"She is hopelessly in love with your servant, a man of no education – "

"_Former_ servant. And he had some schooling as a boy, or I would not have employed him." He cut to the quick. "You want control over the twenty thousand so she'll be forced to marry the Nova Scotian."

"My daughter has never called you an idiot – at least not when it came to matters of money." She smiled, but there was nothing sincere about it.

"And if I refuse?"

"Why would you do something so foolish and counter to your own interests?"

"Let us consider the hypothetical."

She huffed. "I will not hamper your efforts in Parliament, but I will not aid them beyond what I have already done. You will have to bribe them yourself."

He knew of only one thing he could do and be sure of himself, "While I understand that time is of the essence, I require some. Give me a few days to consider your offer."

"Mr. Bingley, I do not see – "

He raised a hand. "Please, Mrs. Hartford. This is a very trying time for all of us, but decisions should not be made in haste." He opened the door for her, and she left without saying goodbye.

Charles, who had been listening the whole time, turned to him. "If you want your revenge, she's offered it to you on a silver platter."

"Somehow I thought it would seem more enticing," Edmund said, and returned to the study to pen a letter.

*******************************************

_Should I have my revenge, so easily within my grasp? Or is perhaps Mrs. Hartford correct to move her daughter into a comfortable situation, far from scandal and financial troubles? She may grow to like and even love this young man, or fall out of love with Richards. I can say now that I have never been able to judge her heart, so I fear I cannot do it now, but nor do I have any desire to ask her. I already know what her answer is, or her mother would not have asked._

_Allow me to relieve you of any worries. Charles, Georgie, Eliza, and Mr. Turner have all been very supportive, and Master Brian is the only delightful thing in my days, so think not that I turned to you for a lack of brains to pick at the Bingley house. The choice remains the same: between what is prudent and what is just, though one can never be sure of either._

_I eagerly await your words, which would be most helpful to me at this time. _

_Your Loving Son,  
Edmund_

Jane looked up from the letter to watch her husband pace the length of their bedchamber, as he'd been doing since he handed her the letter. Monkey followed him like an obedient dog, curious as to what the current game was. Still in his orange kurta, Bingley had just risen for the day when the express courier arrived; the letter was sent overnight.

"Charles."

He looked at her, his eyes betraying his concern. "I mean you no offense. Jane, you are the love of my life. That said, would that I could trade places with him, and not have him suffer so unduly."

"He knows in his heart what is right. He wrote it on the page."

"That does not make it an easy thing to do."

"He will recover from this," she said. "He is a man. He has wealth, and youth, and a kind heart that he no longer sees fit to hide. When all of this is past, he will be setting young hearts aflutter again, and he will be more observant and fortunate in his choice."

Bingley chuckled. "And once Charles marries, we shall have five weddings for the price of four."

Jane smiled. "Yes."

He sat on the bed beside her, and Monkey climbed up into his lap. "Shall I write or do you wish to respond?"

"It is addressed to you?"

"It is addressed to both of us." Only the outside of the envelope specified.

"You are his father. You must set the example." She handed him the letter. "I will write a separate letter of encouragement. Besides, I want more details about all the words my grandson suddenly knows."

*******************************************

A day later Edmund Bingley had his response. His mother's letter was supportive, as always, and sweet – and a little bit chiding. He never should have told her about Eliza's comment on Brian taking such a liking to him because of his hair.

His father, from what could be deciphered, was unwilling to make the final decision for him. Instead he implied it.

_Dr. Maddox always told his children, and I once overhead, 'Do nothing that would haunt you late at night.' You cannot remake your decisions, so make only the ones that will afford you a peaceful night's rest. _

_I, like your mother, am reluctant to give Miss Hartford much sympathy, and there are certainly times when I even wish her ill, but that does not make me the master of her destiny. It is then ironic that the person she has most wronged is precisely that master, and you have the choice to assure her apparent happiness or assure her financial comfort (which presumably means a nice coat, because I understand it is cold in Nova Scotia). Now my fatherly anger turns to Mrs. Hartford, for giving you this dastardly choice._

_I suspect you have already made your decision, and I fully support it. _

_Your mother sends her love. Monkey would say hello, but he is a monkey. We await you at Kirkland._

_Charles Bingley II_

Edmund soon had another visitor that Charles had the good sense to tell him of before allowing in. It was very late at night, and they were the only ones still up except for Georgie, but she was in the Nursery.

Edmund, who had been drinking with his brother, slowly rose to his feet (and held a hand against the wall while doing so) as the visitor entered. "Mr. Richards."

"Mr. Bingley. I am sorry for intruding." His former manservant bowed so deeply Edmund wondered if he would hit the floor. Edmund looked at Charles, who nodded and left them alone, closing the door behind him. "I got your letter."

"Do you love her?"

"Mr. Bingley, I am so sorry – "

"Do you love her?"

Richards stumbled over his words a bit before speaking. "Yes, of course."

"Oh thank goodness; I thought I'd made a terrible mistake." He sat back down, nearly knocking the many letters on the table over. "Lucy's mother is intent on giving me every impression that I have."

"Will she oppose you in Parliament?"

Edmund shrugged. "It is not in her interests either way. A fallen daughter is a fallen daughter. For all her hemming and hawing she will not _oppose_ me, though she is talented at threatening to do so." He needed a moment to refocus before speaking again. "You will marry her before the child is born?"

"That is my intention."

"You will go to France?"

"Yes. She very much wants to go, and we will have an easier time there."

"She does like to do what is fashionable," Edmund said, with no small amount of lament. "And as you are so adept at giving her what she wants, I fear you will do well together."

"Mr. Bingley – "

"Please. I cannot take your apologies as if I want them. I am too tired, too poor, and too drunk," he said. "But if one of us is to be happy, since it obviously isn't me, it might as well be you. Be well, Richards."

"Thank you, Mr. Bingley."

It was a dismissal, if a gentle one. Richards bowed and left the house and hopefully, Edmund's life.

Charles returned. "You did the right thing."

"You sound so sure of it."

"I am sure of it. I wasn't before, but it's easier to say, once the decision is made." Charles patted him on the shoulder. "I would say you'd feel better in the morning, but considering how much we've drunk, I will be safe and say the afternoon."

Edmund giggled, and raised a glass to that.

*******************************************

It was late June, and it was hot. Parliament was still in session, but there was a tired urgency in the air, as if everyone was thinking how much better they would be elsewhere, and not in the stuffy building on the Thames. Edmund had never been there while it was in session, only to meet with members outside or at night, and even now he stood on the other side of the door, with his brother, Mr. Turner, his lawyer, and Frederick Maddox. Charles' friend introduced the bill to legalize the divorce of Edmund Bingley and Lucy Hartford, already sanctified by the bishop, and now requiring an act that would allow them to remarry. It was immediately seconded.

"Before we all _rush_ to celebrate the victory of the injured party – "

"Not this man," Edmund's lawyer said.

"Who is he? And why didn't we bribe him?"

"He used to be a Reformist Party member. Big Evangelical. We expected this."

"We did?" Edmund whispered.

"He does this at everything. Let him talk."

"I have no other choice!"

" – may I remind those of you out there who would, at least by day, proclaim yourselves the watch guards of morality – "

" – as you are so want to do!" said an obviously much younger man, and there was laughter.

The Reformer was undeterred. "I would remind you, Sir, that between the two of us there is only one who has never shown his face in court to answer for the sin of adultery, that being with a duchess of five and forty!"

Another round of laughter, and some hollering.

"Shall we take another bold stroke against the sanctity of marriage?" the Reformer said.

"I believe the bishop has been so kind as to do that for us!" shouted another man, from the other side of the room. "At least he is an honest man, having settled for an annulment to his first wife by declaring himself impotent whilst emerging from a warm bed at Covent Garden!"

The gavel came down to restore order.

"I would even go so far," the distant man continued, "as to say that the sanctity of marriage is sullied just by its mention within the walls of this room! Surely lady justice is most offended by the reference!"

Some laughter and some boos greeted him, about equal in strength. "But justice is blind, gentlemen, and we are not," said a new voice. "It is our duty to set a higher standard, and not roll around in the Georgian mud that stains the books and the minds of our dear countrymen."

"Says the Irishman!"

From his accent he was not Irish. Edmund's lawyer said, "He just lived there as a barrister for many years." But it got laughter anyway.

"Gentlemen, esteemed gentlemen – may I remind you that the issue is not whether the husband and wife ought to divorce, as they have already done so, but if the law sees fit to allow them to remarry and have children?"

"I don't see how that's a problem – the wife's with child, so there's at least one, perhaps two on the way whether we do or say anything!"

"And ought we to reward this behavior, and not punish the wicked?" the Reformist argued.

"We cannot be unduly harsh. I challenge any churchman, from curate to archbishop, to challenge that a bastard should be born in place of a child within the _sanctimony_ of marriage. That is what we are to decide. Should we doom another soul to hell?"

"At least you'll be there to keep him company!"

After they quieted down, Charles' man continued, "I think we are all in agreement that it is too hot for grandstanding. If the gentlemen –"

"You have not been in Parliament long enough if you think it is ever too hot for grandstanding."

" – should consider this bill, to dissolve all traces of marriage between the already-divorced Mr. Bingley and Miss Hartford, which has been blessed by both a judge and a bishop, and both parties in accordance. May we vote, or shall we let Sir ____ talk until he passes from lack of air, and vote without him?"

It was not so easy – it went on for another hour, as the Reformist rallied his supporters. They could not be hasty in their decision; did they not deny kings this very permission? They did and they could again. It was hard to discern who had moved to their side and in what number with all of the shouting and laughing and a good deal of drinking, so much so that a collective breath was held among Edmund's family as the vote was taken and the count tallied.

"The motion passes, with a margin of three votes. All former allegiances between Mr. Edmund Bingley and Miss Lucy Hartford are now null and void," said the Speaker. "Now can we please address the farmer's compensation?"

And with that they moved right along, as if nothing momentous had occurred, and maybe it hadn't. Either way Edmund, kneeling by the door for so long, felt unable to hold himself up, and nearly toppled into Frederick's arms.

"Hey, wake up," Frederick said. "You've achieved something beyond the reach of Henry the Eighth and my father specifically: you're divorced."

.... Next Chapter - The New Vicar


	12. The New Vicar

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

* * *

Chapter 12 - The New Vicar

Payments fulfilled, paperwork submitted, and reputation thoroughly tarnished, Edmund Bingley arrived at his childhood home in Kirkland both traumatized and relieved. He was not above embracing his mother, or allowing her to do so. He had but one request. "Please don't call me your baby."

Jane wiped her eyes. "No, you are most thoroughly a man."

Bingley greeted his son with a handshake. "Good to have you home."

"Thank you, Father."

"I heard so much of your beard."

His shaven cheeks reddened. "I grew tired of looking as old as I felt."

There was a great deal of excitement, as he brought with him all of his siblings and one of their grandchildren. Georgie, eager to be reunited with Geoffrey, agreed to return to Derbyshire with them and have him come to her, as they had to be at Pemberley soon for William's birthday. Eliza and Matthew Turner were better off not staying in Town, and she had not seen her mother since discovering her condition. Charles Bingley III was as much an outcast as Edmund at the moment, though the stain on his character would not remain. Now the only gossip was that of the servants, who were good enough to at least _pretend_ not to know about the divorce and treat Edmund as if he'd never been married.

Brian Darcy, to Edmund's delight, stole the show when he grabbed Monkey. "Ba!" Unlike other young children, he did so with extreme gentleness, and let the animal who could stand nearly as high as he could sit in his lap, so Monkey was not scared off.

"Monkey," Georgie said. "His name is Monkey."

Brian, more interested in the animal than in the many taller people around him, said, "Key!"

"Monkey."

"Key."

"Close enough," Bingley said, only to discover his grandson was not interested in being picked up by this mystery person when he had something alive and more interesting in his arms, and cried out at his approach. Monkey howled. "Very well. I'll wait my turn."

"Papa, he doesn't mean it," Georgie said.

"Nonsense. I very much think he does."

The Darcys arrived early for dinner, to welcome Edmund home and to lavish attention on their grandson. Brian did greatly favor his mother, but he was a boy and he was a Darcy, even if he would not inherit. He was, in an intimate setting, an obliging child, happy to impress them by parroting the words they said as best he could and providing much entertainment before he fell asleep in Elizabeth's arms and Georgie carried him up to bed.

The atmosphere was cheerful. Darcy shook Edmund's hand. "Congratulations." He did not specify, as that would only dampen the mood, and there were many toasts for Eliza and Matthew over her increasing condition. It was hardly uproarious, but neither was it somber, at least when they were so happy just to have everyone home again. Cassandra obviously had many questions that Edmund would not like to be asked, but kept her mouth shut. Sarah knew better and didn't even try. After dinner entertainment was limited to some piano, as everyone was fairly drunk and the travelers fairly tired, and they retreated to their beds what could be considered early.

Geoffrey arrived a few days later with Alison and William, and after more happy toasts and meetings, he took Georgie and Brian with him back to Pemberley – something Brian protested when he discovered Monkey could not come with him. He wore himself out quickly by crying the whole way home, and for the first time at Pemberley, slept in the Nursery and not in a cradle in their bedchamber.

Geoffrey and Georgie were eager for the privacy. Neither of them drank excessively that evening, and even if they had, the ride home followed by attempts to get all the children to bed took long enough that they had their wits about them long enough to feverishly disrobe, discarding pieces of their complicated clothing along the way to the bed. Neither talked until they were sated, which was a good deal later and only after physical exertion. They lay motionless for a while but for their heavy breathing, still somewhat entangled, until Georgie pulled at least the sheet over them against the evening draft.

"I missed you."

"I know," she replied, and kissed him.

"I believe every time we are reunited, we make some impossible promise to never separate again."

"The idea does come to mind, however unfeasible."

"It is a bit so. Nonetheless we can at least aspire to it."

Georgie grinned and wiped his hair away from his eyes. "How are the children?"

"Fine. Fine."

"That fine? They didn't miss me at all?"

He laughed and wiggled into a slightly more comfortable resting position. "There was some crying and some complaining, so I would say that Nurse is earning her keep. She says they are spoiled, with us always in the Nursery. They do not know how to be independent."

"She was not in Japan with Alison."

"This is true." This time he did not smile. "I did ... regret feeling as though I was the last person to hear Brian speak."

"I didn't have it in me to shush him," she said with sympathy. "Though you did suffer, I am glad to have brought him. He was the only person who could make Edmund smile, or even look as though he wanted to remain among the living."

"Then it was a worthy sacrifice."

*******************************************

When the excitement died down, the lazy days of summer set in, and the family finally began to relax. Every conversation did not revolve around Edmund, who had gone silent on the issue of his failed marriage (understandably) but was too swarmed by family to fully retreat into his room. He discussed his finances only behind closed doors and only with his father. He was broke, but more importantly, he was not in debt. He had a few thousand pounds to his name, more than most of England could claim but not enough to begin to rebuild his finances. Bingley offered him more than money – he offered him considerable shares in the family business, if Edmund was willing to take up some of the reins of the silk industry. His son quietly said he would think on it, which meant an eventual yes, but not while his wounds were so new. For once, he did not want to work and instead claim the title his brother Charles enjoyed, that of an idle gentleman for a few months.

Nothing could have made Bingley happier – except the renewed relations between the brothers, which had gone so far south so quickly, then operated on a truce. It seemed as though they were brothers again – never as close as Eliza and Charles would be, but they enjoyed each other's company. It was only then that Bingley and Jane could step back and see the scope of how far Edmund had drifted from the family circle, now that he had returned to it. Whether it was Lucy's influence or his own stubborn, even divisive independence that triggered it, they did not know, but they both swore not to let it happen again.

Eliza was happy to be home. The strain of dealing with both Edmund's situation and her first term was beginning to show, however cheerful she appeared at first glance. At last she entered the commonwealth of women who had been or were with child, one of the few barriers remaining between her and her sister's status. At Kirkland she had her sister, her mother, and her aunt. Soon she would have Aunt Maddox for William's birthday celebration. While Matthew hunted with Geoffrey or went riding with Charles, she could find comfort in her female company, so decidedly more helpful than however many reassurances her husband could offer her.

As for the denizens of Pemberley, they were quickly caught up in preparations for Master William's third birthday celebration. It could be helped that the simple fact that William stood as heir to Pemberley – second in line, after his father of course – made it all the more significant to see him leave behind the most dangerous years of development. At three, he was likely to live to adulthood, and someday hopefully far in the future, take his place as the Master of Pemberley and half of Derbyshire. He would be landlord to hundreds of tenants, he would make decisions about the land that would decide the fate of many families and their livelihood, and he would be responsible for overseeing that the estate and family name prospered. All in good time, but the desire of a grand estate to celebrate the promise of a stable continuity was too great to overcome.

Alison, at seven, was old enough to understand something of it but not to accept it. "But _I'm_ the oldest."

"The oldest child, but only sons can inherit," her mother said. "Is this crooked?" Georgie was trying to hang the tapestry, which frightened the servants. She had to put it up in her dressing chamber and not the bedchamber proper because Geoffrey did not want to see the black-skinned, multi-armed demon each time he woke.

"Mama!"

"I asked you a question, Miss Darcy."

Alison stepped back. "The left should be higher."

"Thank you." She raised it and at last, pinned it to the wallpaper. "Now, as to the severe injustice of being passed over because of your sex, let me assure you that you are not the first woman to complain of it and will not be the last. After all, I am the oldest daughter of Grandpapa and Grandmama Bingley, am I not? But your Uncle Charles is the oldest _son_, so he inherits Kirkland."

"But you married Papa so it doesn't matter."

"And if I had not? I would be unmarried, most likely, or I would be mistress of some other place. But not Kirkland. And you wouldn't exist so count yourself lucky, young lady!" She could not help but be amused at Alison's expression. "Consider this: your brother's life is set. He must inherit Pemberley. You may marry whoever you wish and go wherever you like when you are older, but he must stay here, or at least keep his money here. He has a great responsibility that you do not. And because you will have an inheritance, you may marry whomever you like."

"What about Brian?"

"You may not marry Brian."

"_Mama_."

"He will get something – your father will leave him something in his will, so you need not worry for him. Besides, he has his big sister to take care of him, should he ever be in trouble."

"Like you took care of Uncle Edmund?"

She stifled a laugh, trying to look stern. "You ought not to put it that way and you know it."

"But it is true."

"Yes. It is. But that is between you, me, and this Oriental demon that frightens everyone else."

Alison smiled proudly. "I'm not afraid."

"If you have one nightmare about him I will hold you to those words."

"I'm not! You said the Marykana – "

"Mahakala."

" – is a spirit that protects people, and if Mugen sent it to you, then he wanted it to protect you."

Georgie looked at the tapestry. "I suppose you're right."

"If I had to pick something to protect me, I wouldn't want a footman. I would want that." Alison pointed to the tapestry.

Georgie smiled, and put an arm around her daughter. "So would I."

*******************************************

As preparations were in full swing to celebrate the continuance of the Darcy line, the current master of Pemberley forced his attentions elsewhere, and to a less desirable subject. The late Vicar of Lambton passed away in May, leaving the curate to host services. Though he was young and intelligent, he had no desire to remain in Derbyshire and accept the living when his parents were ailing in Wales. Now that he had an offer there, and the move was financially feasible, it was time to find a replacement for both positions.

The gentlemen of the county were consulted, at least those closest to Lambton – Mr. Bingley, some local businessmen, a mine owner, and of course, Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. One decision was universal: there ought to be one experienced candidate of the two, and not two young men fresh out of school. Lambton was a quiet, traditional parish that would tolerate no young upstarts or Evangelicals, but no one wanted to be bored to tears either. They had quietly and respectfully endured years of the old Vicar's long sermons about proper female conduct after his wife left him for a younger man, and they would have no more of it. Bringing in unmarried men with livings guaranteed (for the Vicar, at least, and the curate if he had extra money) also raised another prospect that no man with unmarried daughters could ignore. He would probably marry someone in the area, which would doubtlessly be settled within his first year.

All of this was discussed at length before they interviewed a single candidate, or even looked at a book of names. Darcy sent his solicitor to London, but the real find was through a referral. The mayor of Lambton's son had gone to Cambridge with a newly-ordained minister named Thomas Emerson, who by all accounts made up for in scholarship what he lacked in social connections, and was eager to find a living, as the family estate was in decline and his father was not a wealthy man, and Mr. Emerson could not expect to inherit much of anything.

Mr. Emerson arrived on the first of August, and sat down with the local gentlemen. He gave a sermon as a guest speaker on Sunday, and it was well-received. He had an air of seriousness about him, but his glasses hid a sort of boyish charm and there was some swooning whenever he removed them. The mayor of Lambton agreed upon a trial period of two months, whereupon if found suitable, he would receive the living.

That left the problem of the curate. Mr. Emerson had a good friend, with whom he had graduated, but they had already decided that two young men in the church were too many, and he nodded with some understanding. It was one of their own who appeared to solve the problem. It was to some surprise that Mr. Hammond, the former mayor of Lambton and now a retired landlord, was an ordained clergyman who in his youth considered a higher career, but did not have the patience. He took Holy Orders but found politics were more interesting, and had a brief career in the House of Commons before returning to Derbyshire to be mayor. He was now of an advanced age but was still active enough to collect rent from his tenants.

"I am ashamed I did not know you were a clergyman, Mr. Hammond," Darcy said. He remembered the man as mayor, but that was more than ten years past, and before that he lived in London. "A lapse in my memory."

"I've not mentioned it in a long time. I will need to brush up a bit, I'm afraid."

The curacy was not a grueling one. It required more patience and counseling skills than actual theological insight, and he had plenty of both. He agreed, certainly for the time being, to be curate so that their current one could return to his family in Wales.

They had a young, smart, well-spoken Vicar and an older curate to help him along in his new duties. A few sermons and though the trial period continued, everyone considered the matter settled.

*******************************************

"Mama! Tell Will he can't hit me!"

"Why are you letting him hit you?"

"It's my birthday!" William said in his defense.

"I know very well what it is, but that does not mean you can hit your sister."

"She was taking my toy."

"I was just looking at it," Alison said.

"Birfda."

"Brian! That's not yours."

"Birfda."

"It's _my_ birthday, not _your_ birthday."

Georgie turned her head in exasperation to her husband, and Geoffrey rose to separate his children, all eager to have their share in attention whether they admitted to it or not. From a distance, Bingley and Darcy watched on, and Bingley would occasionally laugh at something one of their grandchildren did, and Darcy would glare at him, but say nothing to reprimand him. He instead looked to the new arrival on their side of the festive table set up outside. "Dr. Wickham."

"Uncle Darcy. Uncle Bingley."

"We've not had a chance to speak," Bingley said. "How is Mrs. Wickham?"

"Well," George said. Cynthia was in Confinement, so he was the only Wickham to make the brief trip to see his godson. "She is staying with her mother."

"Do you have expectations?"

"Possibly the end of October, early November, if all goes well." He smiled nervously. "G-d willing."

"Though often the most difficult and tedious, it is my understanding that the Confinement is the safest period, in terms of survival of the infant," Darcy said.

"This is true."

"Darcy, are you bothering our nephew?" Elizabeth said, approaching from behind.

He shrugged. "I am not the only one sitting here."

"Aunt Darcy."

"George. It is so good to have you here."

He bowed. "Anything for my godson." With nothing further to say, he left them, to attend to the very person he was discussing.

Elizabeth leaned over. "He's so nervous, but I suppose it's to be expected."

"I remember Darcy being nervous," Bingley said.

"I don't recall that."

"Well, it has been thirty years. Perhaps your memory is a bit faded."

Looking briefly at his wife, Darcy turned and said, "I will not relent on this, Bingley. I was not nervous during any one of Elizabeth's confinements. I was _terrified_. And if you ever repeat that, I will make one of my threats against your person that I have never managed to follow suit with."

"My husband can lay claim to at least one title, that of severe honesty," Elizabeth said, "whether it works to his favor or not."

"I cannot find fault in that," said Bingley, and proceeded to keep most of his remaining snickers to himself.

... Next Chapter - The Next Wickham


	13. The Next Wickham

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

* * *

Chapter 13 - The Next Wickham

The fall was a tense one in the Wickham house. With Cynthia approaching the end of her term, they were not without visitors, making for a much noisier town house than it normally was. Isabella Franklin (nee Wickham) and her husband Saul were frequent guests, with or without their children. Isabel had the power to calm both her brother and her sister-in-law's nerves and still remain excited at the same time, which was a most impressive feat, one no one else could quite lay claim to.

Mrs. Turner stopped by now and again, for which George was grateful. As a doctor on call, he was not always home even when he wished to be, and there were some things best left to the female sex in terms of comforts. His support was that of a husband and a physician, but it was not the total extent of what she needed, and there were women to provide that. He always welcomed Mrs. Turner into his home, seeing no reason not to, and she returned the gesture with a customary but sincere politeness.

A more irregular face was his mother, but he could not and would not stop her; in fact, he could hardly believe when she called on his wife unannounced. When the Bradleys came, it was only with forewarning, and he could count the number of times on a single hand. Fortunately Isabel was there and entirely unsurprised, and Cynthia was not as vexed as he was at the concept that his mother could be supportive.

"This is something you'll never understand," Lydia Bradley told him, "but you're smart enough to know that and humble enough to accept it."

He could almost hear Mr. Bradley rolling his eyes from his position in the armchair with a glass of whiskey. "She called you humble," his stepfather said after she left them. "You should have thanked her for it, I suppose. You don't mind us intruding? She insisted."

"No. Not at all." He didn't _mind_; he was just not accustomed to surprises.

"Have you decided on a name, or are you superstitious?""

George chuckled nervously. "I would not call it superstition."

"You wouldn't call it that, but others might. If it is a boy, will you name him George?"

"I don't know." It was not as if it was not a major consideration. The name George Wickham brought him pain throughout his life, and while he was reluctant to saddle a child with the potential curse, it was a family tradition of three generations, one unrelated by blood. "I suppose I'll let Mrs. Wickham decide."

Mr. Bradley laughed. "That's the way to do it. I'm glad to see you've figured out that much, George."

Near the end of September, the younger Darcy clan arrived in Town for a spell, mainly to be with the Wickhams, but also to see what relatives dared to remain in Town (the Maddoxes) and to do some practical shopping for the children, who were quickly outgrowing their clothing. William Darcy, Stewart Maddox, and Edward Franklin made a terrifying pack when they were all together, though Alison was still twice as tall as them and could intimidate them easily enough.

"I guess she has a little Georgie in her after all," George said after watching her send all three boys off in another direction just with a look. Normally she was a polite, sweet, even dainty little girl – until someone got in her way. Geoffrey avoided responding to the comment.

George had the best doctor he knew lined up to aid Cynthia, but she didn't need him. She only needed the midwife, and after ten hours of labor, she delivered. The Wickhams were not forced to make the decision Mr. Bradley mentioned. It was mid-morning after a long, sleepless night when George went upstairs to greet his wife and daughter.

Cynthia was dozing when he entered. She stirred when he lifted the well-wrapped infant out of her crib and sat down in the chair beside the bed. "How is she?" Cynthia said, not sounding her best. Considering how long she'd been screaming, George couldn't blame her.

"Perfect." Only with a great sense of obligation did he pass his daughter to his wife, so she could hold her for the first time. The baby had lighter brown hair, more like her Uncle Matthew than her mother or father's. There was very little of it, and it would likely darken in time. "She's absolutely perfect."

Emma Wickham was christened the following week at St. George's, where her mother and father had been married. It was her first outing, and the audience was sizable, especially with all the Bradleys. Geoffrey and Georgie stood as godparents.

"If you think you will have some peace now," Geoffrey said to George as he held his daughter in his arms, "you are quite mistaken about fatherhood." But while it was the truth, he said it with a smile on his face, and later they toasted the new addition to the family.

The Darcys stayed long enough to ensure that George did make the transition to fatherhood, which he did with surprising ease, appearing at a lunch with Geoffrey at a club bleary-eyed but grinning. "I never slept well anyway."

"No wet nurse?"

"It's better for her health," George said. "Both of them."

"You are the expert."

"But three! I cannot imagine it."

"We did not have them all at once."

They parted only with great reluctance, and many assurances to see them soon, Christmas at the latest. The Darcys returned to Lancashire for the fall, and aside from occasional visitors, lived in a privacy they did not have in Derbyshire.

They did have one new guest: Edmund Bingley. Charles returned to Town, and Eliza and Mr. Turner went south to their family house in Sussex before she would be at Kirkland for her confinement.

"Eenmund!" Brian shouted, reaching out with one arm while the other clung to his mother's side as he entered.

Edmund grinned and took Brian into his arms. "Georgie. Geoffrey. Master Brian."

"Edmund. Welcome." They were both happy to have him. Though he could hardly be considered a happy man, he was not the haunted figure of the summer. He was still thin, and often saddened in quiet moments, but he had never been bouncing full of joy. The emotional wounds, still open and visible, were not so raw.

"Uncle Edmund," Alison said with a curtsey. William grinned but hid behind his sister.

Though life in Lancashire was quiet, there were plenty of activities to fill his schedule. Alison did not yet have a governess, but her mother and her nurse helmed her education, so she was quite proficient at reading, writing, and some French, and of course she was completely fluent in Japanese and could even read a little of it. She had a tutor for violin and cello. It was her uncle who was more than happy to sit down with her and give Alison her first math lessons. She would not be expected to progress very far in the subject, but the very basics were important to housekeeping and purchasing goods, and he found himself an eager teacher on a subject he knew so well.

William was not so easy. He was three, and just starting to learn his letters, and only did so with great resistance on his part. He was, like his father, a great outdoorsman, or at least preferred it to anything resembling a lesson, and would go darting out the door, leaving someone (often Geoffrey or a servant) to chase after him.

Brian Darcy was walking, which gave Nurse more to deal with but gave Georgie a new level of freedom from the responsibilities of an infant. Edmund was the one who watched the saddened expression on her face as Brian followed Nurse out of the room and said, "I thought you would be proud. He is so attached to you."

"I know. That is what I should be, and I am." She was silent for a great while, and Edmund did not push her into what she wanted to say. "I was so tired after Brian, because he came so quickly after William. I think perhaps in the spring I will feel a renewed energy."

Edmund only raised an eyebrow instead of answering her, which was enough. He could only remember his older sister discussing her delicate condition as a young, frightened girl engaged to a University student. Now that was nearly a decade past, and her first instinct was to have more children when there was not one but two potential heirs to Pemberley. At some point it would have been unfathomable to both of them; now it was unquestionable to her and enlightening to him.

Geoffrey was for the most part joyously content. "I don't fear my responsibilities at Pemberley," he responded when asked, though in a more circumspect way. "I am just determined to enjoy this place for as long as I have it. When my father wishes to retire or is forced to retire, I will simply spend more time there. Despite the example my father currently sets, one does not have to always be present. Great men are never at home, at least not while they're young."

"He became master of Pemberley when he was very young, did he not?"

"Yes. He was three and twenty, I believe. He had guardianship of my Aunt Kincaid, who was barely eleven, and no mother or father to look over his shoulder. And yet he says he was only there a few months of the year when he was a bachelor, having so many social responsibilities. Either way, it was very hard on him."

"Do you think he will retire?"

Geoffrey was fishing and Edmund, who did not know how, was watching. He recast his line. "I may have to talk him into it. I do not think he knows how to be anything else than a dutiful master. So far I've only succeeded in convincing him to let me work on the yearly ledger with him, and have his solicitor do more. Beyond that, he is determined to sit on his throne and I am determined not to argue with him over it. Ah! A bite." He reeled in a fish, very small, that perhaps could be good fried, but nothing compared to what the cook had already bought. He unhooked it and released it back into the water.

"You must return home with no spoils."

"Alas, I've seen enough dead, raw fish in my life," Geoffrey replied, "when I lived in Japan."

*******************************************

They all returned to Derbyshire for the holidays. Eliza entered her first confinement in the comfort of her childhood home and surrounded by her relatives, and Mr. Turner was not without his own, as all three Wickhams made the trip north as guests at the Darcy house. With Isabel and Saul Franklin and their children, Pemberley's long hallways were flooded with little children again, none of whom would own up to the broken vases and the overturned chairs.

"You are very loose with your forgiveness for the destruction of Pemberley," Elizabeth said to her husband, "provided it comes at the hands of small children, preferably grandchildren."

"This is true," he said. "I am not so much a fool to deny it."

The season yielded one surprise: The Bellamonts, who usually visited in the spring, were spending Christmas with the Kincaids in Scotland, and came down the week before to see everyone. Grégoire and Caitlin were eager to meet Emma Wickham, and would not wait for the thaw to do so while she was so far north. Patrick Bellamont, now a young man slightly taller than his father, was also facing a decision: to attend University in England, Scotland, or his native Ireland.

The advice was universal. "To study the law, you must go to Oxford," said Darcy, a Cambridge man. Aside from Edmund, almost everyone was. "There is no acceptable comparison."

"Tis not me land, but me Pa does say da same."

"I have tried to console him on his perceived treason by reminding him that his father is a Frenchman," Grégoire said.

"The Chief Justice of Ireland is English, I believe."

Patrick was angry, though not at his Uncle Darcy. "'snot roight."

"If you wish to change it, and rise the ranks of a barrister, you must have the best possible education, Nephew. On this, surely, we agree."

Patrick, who possessed the good nature of his father but the patience of his mother, fumed but also nodded. "I'll t'ink about it."

His father did not need consoling. When Patrick was out of the room, his mood did not change. "I cannot and will not discourage his devotion to his heritage."

"But he will get a better position if he has a Oxford education."

Grégoire shrugged. "He will see this wisdom eventually. He is stubborn, but not unreasonable. I prefer to let time take its course than engage his pride."

"You are so confident that it will," Darcy said.

"I have great faith in him. Perhaps too much, but worse has been said of a father."

"You are a pushover."

Again, he just smiled. "So my wife readily reminds me. Thank goodness he has two parents and not just the one or the other."

*******************************************

With the new year brought new additions to the family; Eliza Turner (nee Bingley) ended her first confinement almost exactly to their expected date with the delivery of a healthy baby boy. He had his father's features (of what could be discerned of a newborn) but his mother's blond hair. He was baptized Elliot Turner in the Lambton church, named partially after his godfather, Edmund Bingley. It was a particularly cold February morning and the ceremony was done quickly; Elliot expressed his displeasure by crying the entire time and they retreated to their respective houses. Eliza, still weakened, caught a chill and was in bed for several days, but fortunately Dr. Wickham was already there to see his nephew's birth, so he rang no alarm and she slowly returned to health.

It was Cynthia Wickham's first trip north since Emma's birth, so there was the excitement of two infants, not one. There was little else to do but admire them for several days, as a particularly cold snap struck Derbyshire and they huddled around the fires and the heat from the new piping installed in Pemberley and Kirkland. Were it not for all of the children, Darcy would have gone about his regular tradition of relieving the servants from their duties and closing up the unused parts of Pemberley when it was so cold, but there was quite enough for everyone to do with several small children who were good at getting out of whatever their mothers wrapped them in. William Darcy proved the expert at this, with Brian following in his example, only to bury himself in his mother's skirts when he was cold.

When the weather broke, the Wickhams returned to Town, and the Turners reluctantly parted with the rest of the family so Mrs. Turner and Matthew's side of the family could meet their newest member. All the Darcys remained at Pemberley with the comforts of home, but Charles Bingley III returned to the Bingley house in London.

Edmund remained, and as the weather improved, so did his mood. He slowly took interest in his father's ledgers, specifically the ones related to the silk business. It was not entirely different from his previous work as an investor, and he had no trouble mastering what was available to him. Bingley conferred via letter with Brian Maddox, who still held a near-controlling interest in the company, to decide Edmund's first assignment. Certainly, he did not want him to go abroad so quickly; there were ways to learn the business in England and Edmund wasn't as versed in languages as his father and sister were. He could not show his face in London yet, so he stayed at Kirkland, spending hours with his father, pouring over old receipts and market notes. It was a promising sign; Edmund would never do well as an idle gentleman. He had the same restlessness of his father, manifested differently, and he needed the stimulation that a business provided.

In March they sent him to Kent, to speak to a wholesaler with an established repertoire with Charles Bingley II, and see about renewing a contract. Edmund returned successful. His brother had another report – London might be thawing to Edmund Bingley, as some people could not readily recall his name (or at least, the specifics of the scandal surrounding his name) in Charles' many social gatherings, which he judged a good sign. Lucy Hartford was long gone, and the scandal sheets had interests elsewhere. They could wait, and hope.

*******************************************

It was at one of these gatherings that Charles Bingley III was interrupted from his business of finding out about his brother's reputation with other concerns. First, he had agreed to escort Danny Maddox, whose interest in finding a wife was not diminished with his sight, and occasionally amazed people with his ability to follow a dance as long as the other dancers did not vary from the set path, but he could only pull that off with two or three established dances and spent the rest of the night merely being charming. It was one of the only occasions where he wore black glasses like his father, to distract from the disfiguring scars behind them. Frederick and Lady Heather usually escorted him, but Stewart had a cold and they were busy, so Charles offered his services.

There was the other reason, the more obvious one, to attend. With his brother's disgrace fading, his own reputation was no longer tarnished by the association, and he went about the business of finding himself a wife. If he were not feeling both excessively picky and excessively guilty about the matter he would not have found it hard; he was a wealthy heir with good looks and manners to match. His uncle owned half of Derbyshire; his other uncle was a knight. The Bingley family's humble origins were all but forgotten when he showed up dressed well but not like a dandy (he secretly despised those false twits, always sending confusing signals to him). He also liked to dance, which helped a great deal in getting through the long balls without seeing a single decent prospect. He was a very charming prospect to many women; Danny had a look of perpetual amusement.

"What are you smiling about?"

"You are quite the eligible bachelor, Mr. Bingley. Or so they keep saying when your back is probably turned."

"It isn't always even turned," Charles said uncomfortably. That Danny was obviously aware and yet so unaffected by the more indecorous talk surrounding him was astonishing, but he decided not to mention it. "Are you dancing the last set?"

"I don't know it. Besides, I can smell dinner from here and it is altogether distracting me."

Charles smiled and looked around. There were the women he had danced a set with at some ball or another, those that were interested in someone else or engaged, and a few relegated to the corners for one disgrace or another – too fat, too thin, too unfashionable, a bad dancer. He knew the crowd well, but didn't know their names.

One caught his eyes. He asked to be introduced, and the name was familiar. "Mr. Bingley, may I present Miss Emerson?"

Surprised, she rose to curtsey to him. "Mr. Bingley."

He bowed. "Miss Emerson." Now he remembered. "Am I mistaken in thinking that your brother is the new vicar of Lambton?"

"You are not, sir. I visited him for Christmas."

"That is where I know you from." She was alone, though presumably she had some female companions who were engaged. She was not pretty in the traditional sense, and her dress was not the latest fashion, but she was hardly comely, simply out of her league at this particular ball. He knew the feeling. "May I request the honor of the next dance, Miss Emerson?"

She was shocked, though she did her best to hide it. "You may."

Their conversation was limited, as it was their first dance, and a very complex one at that. She was a very good dancer, and seemed to be enjoying it so much that he was reluctant to distract her with talk, but when he did, it was of the latest play at the Royal Theater, which they both had seen. She talked about the performances, not the scandal of one of the actors that was the more usual topic when mentioning that theater; he was an opium addict and regularly performed doped. There was some scattered conversation about upcoming balls, and an art exhibit, and by then the dance was over.

Dinner would have been torture if Charles weren't in a better mood. Charles Bingley III dancing with a girl with little dowry and not much to recommend her was topic enough for the tables beside him, as if he couldn't hear them perfectly well. He was not seated near Miss Emerson, and Danny kept his thoughts to himself. Charles saw her only once more that evening, on the way out, when they bid goodnight.

Chances were he would see her again. The social scene was only so large; the acquaintance was unavoidable. But this time, the guilt of leading a woman he had no traditional manly interests in on was tempered by a faint sense of hope.

... Next Chapter - Well-traveled


	14. Welltraveled

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

* * *

Chapter 14 - Well-traveled

Edmund Bingley put a hand down on his horse's mane to steady it. He was trained to ride just like everyone else was, but never had much passion for it, and so a long journey for him was haphazard at best. He could have used a carriage, but after reviewing the maps, he decided the established route was too meandering, and he would be at his destination by nightfall if he simply took a horse from the station.

His second and more complex assignment for his father's company involved a trip to Somerset, and a week's stay at a business partner's house. Mr. Wilkinson was trying to sign other local landlords looking for an increase in their investments into a contract, and Edmund would be there to assist and be the company representative. Though he had no doubt he would not fail in his mission, he was nervous anyway, a feeling he wasn't used to when it came to business. Perhaps that was why he was determined to get there as expediently as possible.

For early April it was quite pleasant, especially this far south. When he was far enough from the last shelter – but according to the map, some miles from his destination – did he remove his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow, only to feel a drop of rain. He had been looking forward, not up. No wonder his horse was so fidgety.

Should he ride it out? Edmund was not a good enough horseman to know. He could not presume to beat the rain in unfamiliar territory. Instead he kicked his horse and picked up pace, hoping for the best.

Within a few minutes, he was raising his hand to protect against the rain long enough to look for shelter. "A hopeless endeavor," he said to himself, or the horse. Spotting a barn, he directed the antsy filly to it. There was no light inside, and no one responded when he knocked, but a good push revealed that it wasn't locked, just abandoned. He had to kick aside fallen beams to get the door open enough before stepping inside. When he removed his hat, water fell from it like a bucket. He was soaked.

"Good girl," he said to the horse, guiding her to what once was a hitching post. She snorted at him, but that hardly made him any wetter than he already was. He doubted anything could, and after removing her saddle, turned his attentions to himself. There was a blanket in the bag that was still mainly dry, and he shed himself of his outer layers and wrapped himself in it.

It was not a barn so much as a house that was used as a barn at some point before being abandoned. There was a fireplace, and plenty of hay, so he started a fire easily enough. He just needed to keep feeding it fallen planks and it would burn for a long time. "At least I won't be cold. Wet, maybe, but not cold."

"Speak for yourself."

He spun around so fast as to almost trip himself into the fire, stopping himself in time by grabbing the wall. The woman facing him blushed, but it could barely be distinguished from her pallor. She had her arms crossed in some attempt at keeping warm. Her whole heavy dress was soaked, her bonnet utterly ruined, and she was visibly shivering. She curtseyed quickly, and he returned with a bow. "Excuse me," she said, "I didn't know how to get your intention."

She sounded as embarrassed as he felt. He closed the blanket around him. He was wearing a shirt and vest, but that did not excuse him. "Forgive me. I was distracted from your entrance." He stepped away from the fire, therefore inviting her to partake in it.

She curtseyed again and sat down on the hay bale in front of the fire, facing it and not him. "I was caught walking in the rain."

"So was I," he said. "I mean – riding. I was riding. To town. The Wilkinson's house."

"Cheswick Park?"

"Yes. That's the place."

"It's not far from here. A few miles – " Her speech was interrupted by a sneeze. She held her hands out to the fire, but they were still shaking.

"Excuse the impropriety," he said and removed his blanket, draping it over her. "I'll go, if you wish."

"It's still pouring! Do you know the way?" She had to remove her bonnet to let it dry in front of the fire. Her dark curls, probably once a beautiful arrangement, were all but ruined.

"I'm afraid not, except by map," he said. "I – insisted on arriving early." He heard thunder. "Now I suppose I'll be late."

"I know Mr. Wilkinson," she said. "My husband and his share a border of land."

"I don't know him, but I'm here on behalf of my father's company," he said, and then embarrassed, added, "Mr. Bingley."

She did not rise to curtsey, something he did not blame her for. Wet, her gown must have been very heavy. "Mrs. Wright."

He cleared his throat. "I will leave, if you wish me to."

"In all good conscience I cannot do that," she said. "You could catch your death out there."

He had to smile; she spoke like his mother chiding him, but she could not have been older than him. "I've been through worse. We Northerners are a hardy bunch."

"Where are you from?"

Because he had nothing else to do, he answered, "Derbyshire."

"Sussex, originally."

"My sister is married to a Sussex man, but I cannot say I have been, except in passing."

"And I have never been to Derbyshire, though I've heard it's quite pleasant."

"It is." He wiped his nose. "Wet, also. I should be more accustomed to it, but I've been living in Town."

"You are a businessman."

"This is true." Perhaps too much. His fancy boots would require some refurbishment after this trek. He opened the door again, and lo and behold, it was still as bad as it was when he entered, if not worse. He shut it and barred it against being blown open. "I have some biscuits in my bag, if you'd like any. Nothing else, I'm afraid. I didn't expect to be caught like this."

"I would not have strayed so far," she said. She shivered again. "Yes, I would appreciate your offer, Mr. Bingley."

He retrieved the saddle bag, and brought it to the fireplace, removing the remains of his snack, now mostly crumbled, and offering them to her. "You should eat something, to fight off the cold."

The biscuits were dry, but she accepted them. "Everyone assumes me meek and vulnerable because I'm so thin."

"No," he said, though it was true. He had assumed that. "My sister – my other sister – is tiny and she is the toughest person I know."

"Is she young yet?"

"Older, actually. She has three children. I am the youngest."

For the first time since her arrival, she looked directly at him. "You cannot be more than five and twenty."

"Four and twenty, to be honest. So you are correct."

She was sympathetic. "You carry yourself as if you're older." She added, "That is a compliment."

"Thank you." He would not do well to guess her age, at least not out loud. "Mrs. Wright."

They passed the time in silence. She sat and he paced, but they were trapped by the ongoing downpour. At last he remembered the flask of brandy his brother had advised him to pack, and seeing that she was still shivering, advised Mrs. Wright to have it.

"It's strong," she said after a swallow.

"It will warm you, hopefully."

This time she did not let him lapse into silence so easily, though he would not take any for himself. "What kind of business are you in, Mr. Bingley?"

"Investments." Realizing he'd have to add to that to pass any time, he said, "I have a share in the company my father started, trading with the East India Company. When he retires, I may inherit it. Before that, it was all just stocks."

"You stand to inherit?"

"Just that. My brother is the older one."

"Have you been to India?"

"No. I am not well-traveled. Only Ireland if you would count that."

"I have never left Britain," she said, "so I would count that."

If her husband was not a traveler, she was not. He could not recall Mr. Wright on the list of names of people in the area, but he had only skimmed it. Instead he looked at her, and their eyes meeting struck him somewhere that made them both look away.

They were silent for a long time.

"You will not tell my husband we met this way."

"No. Of course not."

"We will have to pretend not to know one another at all."

"I suppose we will." He laughed. "Just when I thought my reputation could not possibly be further tarnished."

"Oh?" She covered her mouth. "I should not ask."

"You have not heard? I suppose I overestimate my worth. Well, it is no secret – I am divorced."

"Recently?"

"Yes. Last summer."

"I _do_ know you." She blushed. "Forgive me. I did read something about Parliament passing an Act of Divorce. It is so rare – "

"It was me. Hence my wandering about England but avoiding London, where I dare not show my face."

"And your former wife?"

"In France, I hear. Living with her lover." And yet, he could feel no shame in it. It had happened before everyone's eyes and another pair couldn't hurt him anymore than a thousand already had. "It could have been worse."

"English law is no stranger to unhappy marriages," she said, and looked down. He turned away. "You're shaking," she said. So she watching him, like he was watching her.

"My jacket should be dry by now," he said, and retrieved it, brushing the hay off it. It was damp, but not cold. "It will be soon." It was dry enough for him to throw over his shoulders and wrap around him like a blanket. He put another piece of wood on the fire. It was dark outside, darker than it had been before. "It will be night soon."

"I know."

"Your husband will be looking for you?"

"I imagine so."

"Did you tell someone where you were going?"

"No."

Edmund swallowed. "Are you running away?"

"No. I was just walking. He knows I have nowhere to go."

Edmund could not, and would not, properly respond to that. The rain was his answer, pounding away at the roof and threatening the little, warm world inside the barn. He forgot the chill, and the fire attempting to fight it, and everything else that stood in his path as he kissed her very warm lips, so much more comforting than a fire, which despite all its movement, was not a living thing.

She did not resist him. There was the brief moment of shock, when they sat with their faces inches apart, trying to comprehend if it had only been thought of so many times and not actually happened, before she said, "Are you normally this impulsive?"

"I can safely say this is the most impulsive thing I've ever done in my life," he replied, and for the first time since entering the barn, said something with no regret. He did not have time to feel any in the flurry of action as he kissed her and she reached out to him, pulling him closer by his necktie and unbuttoning his shirt. Her hand was so much softer than his probably were; he felt guilty about that much. Nor was he particularly interested in being gentle about the complex matter of removing the ties that kept her in her oppressive gown. She giggled and had to help him. He had never undressed a woman from start to finish before. Lucy was his first and only, and she had her lady-maid do most of the work.

No wonder she was still cold. Her gown was soaked through. He ran his hand along her clammy skin. "You are scared."

"You are very observant," she said, trying to laugh away her fear.

"Should I stop?" Not that he was entirely sure he could. When she did not answer, he had to insist, "Mrs. Wright – "

"Don't call me that."

"You haven't given me another name."

"Neither have you, Mr. Bingley." She added, "Julia."

"Edmund."

After that clarification, there was no need for any more.

*******************************************

Edmund awoke to the last crackling of the fire going out. Even with the morning chill and his own body covered only by the blanket and his shirt, they did not need it. The sun was coming up and the rain was over. Besides, he could not bring himself to leave his very comfortable position to tend to the fire. He would in a minute, he told himself, and stroked Julia's wayward strands of hair, her curls quite undone both by the rain and their evening's activity. He did it not strong enough to wake her, but enough to feel them between his fingers.

She opened her eyes, such a beautiful blue, and this time she did not hide them in shame, even though he was hardly dressed appropriately to look at. "Is it morning?"

"Yes."

"Is it raining?"

"Unfortunately not."

She did stir, but not away from him just yet. "I have just violated the sanctity of my marriage, and yet, I confess I feel no regret."

"I have heard much of violations of the sanctity of marriage," he said, "and therefore cannot bring myself to answer in its defense. I will add that I have potentially ruined my entire business endeavor and brought further disaster to my name."

"And you feel?"

Edmund answered by kissing her. He could not bring himself to say he never felt better in his life. The only sadness he felt was that it was coming to a close. "Should I ask you why you ran from your husband, or will it just throw me into some sort of protective rage?"

"I do not know enough of your character," Julia said, "but I do not wish to speak of it. Forgive me."

"You are forgiven." He wished he was strong, like his sister, and could forge his own way, but he could not. He had to let it go. "If it is any small comfort, you have given me every inclination to do right by you, were it within my abilities to do so."

"You say that, but do you mean it?"

"I always mean what I say," he said, wrapping his arms around her. "I am of that unfortunate condition."

She giggled and kissed his collarbone, the nearest available place. They made love again, with only the air of finality both heightening it and casting a small pale of gloom. They were both a bit like awkward newlyweds the first time, but not the second, or the third, or the last. Only when he was physically removed from her did it occur to him something had passed from him – not so much a substance but a feeling that he might never feel again. Or he would – he could hope.

Julia could not dress herself. He had to help her, and it was more complex than pulling it apart, but he managed and she chided him for being such an adept abigail. His own clothing he could handle, though his cravat and tie would be a bit misshapen until his manservant arrived to fix it.

"If we see each other," she said, as he had little doubt it might happen, "it will be as if we never met?"

"It shall be so," Edmund said, despite his inclination to say or believe otherwise. "I am not the sort of man my actions would lead you to believe I am. Or, I thought I wasn't."

"I did not think I was this sort of woman," she said, "who could fight for her happiness."

They embraced. "Goodbye, Julia."

"Goodbye, Edmund."

There was such an oppressive finality to it. He waited until she was gone before wiping his eyes and turning to saddle his horse once again. He waited a set amount of time before returning, clothed and bleary-eyed, to the road.

*******************************************

Sore for all the wrong reasons, Edmund was never happier to be off his horse as the footman escorted him to the entrance of Cheswick Park. An older, well-dressed man greeted him in the doorway. "Mr. Bingley. Welcome to my home."

He bowed. "Mr. Wilkinson."

"Do not be alarmed. I have no great spies. You simply look very much like your father, as I'm sure you are aware." They shook. "May I introduce Mrs. Wilkinson?"

"Mr. Bingley."

"Mrs. Wilkinson." Edmund bowed to the elderly woman who was overdressed and carrying a very small dog. "Thank you for hosting me."

"It is our pleasure. We so rarely have guests."

Mr. Wilkinson happily took him on a tour of the house, which was built over an ancient castle (or so he believed) and had a sort of eclectic charm to it. Only after that was there tea and finally lunch out on the veranda, overlooking the fields that separated his lands from his neighbor's, Mr. Wright, who could be somewhat standoffish but was a good shooter and better businessman, though his interests lay closer to home than the East. Mr. Wilkinson did not stay long on the topic and Edmund did not encourage him to, and began to question him on all things related to himself and his father. "I hope you were not held up by the rain, Mr. Bingley."

"No," he said. "I would not say it was an inconvenience." Edmund had many things to call it, both good and bad, happily romantic and actively gnawing at his heart, but an inconvenience was not a word he would use.

... Next Chapter - Cheswick Park


	15. Cheswick Park

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note:** The story "The Price of Family" is **now out in paperback **as the book "The Plight of the Darcy Brothers." (Sourcebooks wanted Darcy in the title) It is pretty much the same as the story posted here, but with much better editing for grammar and consistency. I'm not asking anyone to buy it. If you do it to support me, that's great. If not, I totally understand and am committed to keeping fanfic free. I'm mostly posting this because some people like reading these stories in book form and also because some people bought my first book thinking it wasn't fanfic they had read before. I don't like unhappy readers, so you're all being told this now so there's no confusion.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 15 - Cheswick Park

Country life was slower than in Town, and Edmund was introduced to members of the community before Mr. Wilkinson was even willing to talk business. In a small gathering of locals to which Edmund was invited, he met all of the men he had business with along with several others – the local clergy, some landlords and retired men. In passing, he met Mr. Wright. He shook his hand like he did with everyone else, and in his opinion did a good job of it. They did not speak longer than necessary. Mr. Wright was older, probably in his fifties from his grey hair, and quiet, opening his mouth only to express his opinion. Edmund could not make out other people's opinions of him and did not want to ask, even though his heart was beating fast and he retreated to the corner to sip wine as a conversation was struck about politics. He balanced being desperate to know more and eager to be gone until it was time to return to Cheswick, whereupon he retired until dinner.

He could not rest. The night before, he had slept badly, despite a pleasant dinner with the Wilkinsons and some talk of business, usually his favorite kind of talk. He could not bury himself in his notes or his ledgers. Nor did he resort to drink, as if he didn't deserve for the pain to be dulled, nor even want it to be.

The truth – and he was, after a tiring day, willing to be honest with himself – was that he was as angry with himself as he was the happiest he could remember, which was all the more reason for discontent. To say a brief encounter with another man's wife was improper was not necessary as it was so much a given, but he could not let go his fascination at the events. He lamented that it would be easier to simply castigate himself for doing wrong and move on, but his mind could not and would not. He was already, only a day in, fighting off creeping thoughts of ways to see her again. It didn't make sense, he told himself over and over. Sexual satisfaction, something long overdue, could be found in more appropriate places. He really knew nothing of her, and had no reasonable chance of knowing anything else about her; a social relationship would only lead to disaster and he should avoid her at all costs while preserving the picture of a normal guest. She was not a person he should have formed any kind of bond with, no more than a man did with a mistress (but she deserved to be called more than that!), and he denied it was there until it hurt. There was a physical pain in his chest. He knew it to be illusory and did not call for a doctor, but it remained, and could not be wished away.

*******************************************

In Town, Charles Bingley III had a very busy schedule. Aside from his regular habits of visiting clubs, paying call on the Wickhams or the Maddoxes, or some bit of family business, he now had the added pleasure of the company of Miss Emerson, to whose companionship he had been repeatedly thrown into by circumstance and (to be fair) some design on his side. He ran into her twice at the theater, both of them being regulars. The first time, she was in the escort of her aunt and uncle, and he spoke to her only a few minutes during intermission. The second, she was in the company of a married friend and her husband, and he had a bit more freedom to engage her after the play. It was a production of Macbeth that he had little patience for, having seen better, and she agreed.

She was clever, she was funny, and she was someone with whom he conversed easily – a very favorable trait in his mind. Through very roundabout but established means, he learned of her fortune – she had little of it. Her father left a ruined business and her brother had his living as a Vicar, but it was only properly enough to keep a wife, even though he had none. She currently lived in London at the family house with a companion, but properly she would have to marry soon, as once her brother married, he could no longer support her. From both her implication and what he heard around the clubs, her brother was a kind, quiet fellow, a good person to make a Vicar. He might never abandon her, but that did not mean he could provide for her.

Charles had no doubt that she was putting the same or even more effort into finding out everything about him. All of the information he wanted people to know – his family, his fortune – was perfectly public, and she would easily discover he was a wealthy bachelor with no previous scandals (aside from a divorced and disgraced brother). He was not a womanizer, he was not a gambler except for on very irregular occasions, and he was not a drunk. He had everything to recommend him except that he was known for being immune to some women's attractions, and notoriously picky; that probably only concerned her a little. Before long, there might be talk.

So far he had been very lucky about his private life, though he never rested easily, and even less now. He would never recover from being discovered (in fact, he would probably have to flee the country to avoid being hanged), so he did not appreciate too many inquiries into his private life. And that, of course, was not the beginning and end of his troubles.

*******************************************

"It's too early, I know," Charles said, "but I'm thinking of marrying this woman."

Dr. Creswell did not look surprised. "I assume she has much to recommend her."

"Not in terms of fortune, or standing, though our union would be no scandal."

"Careful – you do her little credit already."

Charles frowned. "I do." He looked down at his wine glass, trying to find his words. "I think I actually like her."

"I would assume there is at least some surface affection if you are pursuing a fortuneless woman. What is she like?"

"Very charming. We have very similar interests, and she is intelligent, but not a bore or female academic. You know the types."

"Yes."

"She's pretty – well, she's not terrible to look at, I would say. She's just not to fashion." He said, "How can it possibly be that women are supposed to adhere their body types to fashion? It's not something they can change."

Dr. Creswell smiled. "Have you not noticed it is the same with men? We must keep our figures slim, our hair perfectly styled. I ought to be dying my hair." He played with the tip of his grey curls. "And not wearing glasses so often. Terribly unfashionable. Old men are for bumping into things and squinting, and Mother Nature insists upon informing me through many aches and pains as I rise in the morning that I am old. But enough about me." He was always very charming, like he wasn't even a doctor and Charles wasn't a patient with an incurable condition. "I will say the obvious, that you ought to give it a bit more time."

"I know. But I feel bad about leading her on."

"Then you have some concern for her feelings, which is a good sign," the doctor replied. "It makes a good man, and a better husband."

Charles sighed. "I'm not sure I can go through with this."

"I cannot force you, Charles. I cannot even really ask it of you, but you do not have a myriad of options for happiness if you wish to remain in society."

"I know."

"One thing that fashion cannot alter is that the production of a family requires the attendance of one of each gender, precisely," he said. "And a legitimate family, a marriage ceremony. If that is what you want, there are hurdles that may seem impassible, but are not necessarily so."

"What if I come to a point where I can't bring myself to do all this to her?"

Dr. Creswell's answer was quick. "Then I will know you are, at least to the extent you can be, in love."

Charles swallowed. "There is an additional factor that may be a problem."

"Oh?"

"I think I am already in love."

*******************************************

"And what did the doctor say?"

Charles groaned and rolled over, facing away from Paul. "I should have never have told you about him!"

"You haven't even told me his name."

"That is neither here nor there. You know enough to do the right damage."

"That's because I know you." Paul leaned over, and rested his head on Charles' shoulder. "At least in the biblical sense."

"Stop!"

"You cannot end the story there. It's practically a crime."

Charles was sure that in that room, it was the least of the crimes being committed, if not at this very moment. "I complimented you."

"Be specific."

"I didn't go into specifics. He doesn't need to know specifics. If I put my life on the line it's going to be for a damn good reason." But he could not help but laugh. Paul's presence always made him do that. "I said you were handsome, you were free of disease – "

"You told him that? That's a compliment?"

"He's a doctor."

"Some doctor. A sodomite and an abortionist."

Charles grabbed his pillow from under him and threw it at Paul, hitting him in the chest, but with no real malice. "You know very well the meaning of my words. I said I liked you, and that I was not willing yet to give you up. In fact, I would even say I am dangerously invested in you."

He was, and that was the problem. It was supposed to have been a fling, a brief bit of gratification before his long journey into near-celibacy and marriage. They met at a club, and enough knowing looks later, they were at the flat Charles kept on the East End. It should have ended in the morning, but instead they went out for breakfast, and drinks, and risked being seen together socially (always unwise) for each other's company. Paul was younger, and the strain of years of hiding and self-hatred were not yet showing; he resented mainly his family for forcing on him an engagement arranged when he was very young. Legally he could get out of it, but who would come in its place? He would be thrust into the marriage market, somewhere he had no desire to be. He said maybe it was better to marry this girl, whom he'd known sporadically since childhood, and be done with it. And yet he was not so jovial all the time. He could not go through with the marriage – he understood the complexities of it as much as Charles knew his own situation to be a disaster waiting to happen. Their time together was like a drug, or a drunken state – it was an opportunity to forget and be happy.

No, he could not dismiss Paul as a tonic to ease his pain. He was a friend, every bit a companion as Miss Emerson. That was what worried him.

"You cannot be dour," Paul said. "It is not yet morning."

"No," Charles replied, acknowledging it. "Not yet."

*******************************************

"So what is this I've been hearing about your new beau?"

Charles rolled his eyes at Frederick, but mainly concentrated on holding on to his cousin Danielle, who was very apt of climbing up onto people's shoulders. "Probably whatever is going around, which is that we've been in half a dozen compromising situations already, which you know not to be true. I'm not even formally courting her."

"Everyone thought I would be a dissolute bachelor most of my life before finally being caught with some strumpet and forced to marry."

"We didn't say it."

"You were being polite." Frederick accepted a refill on his glass of wine. "I take great pleasure in proving people wrong. Isn't that right, darling?"

Lady Heather entered, and leaned over to kiss her husband on the cheek. "I cannot deny it when you make it so obvious. Are you done with your inquisition?"

"I should say not! I've hardly heard anything about this girl who has caught Charles' very selective eye."

"You are making too much out of it," Charles said. "I am not courting her."

"It's not always love at first sight. Sometimes it's merely attraction at first sight, only you are too young and stupid to act on it, and she happens to be Georgie's best friend so you think twice before doing so because you don't want to lose your head."

"Frederick!"

"What? I was being honest. A little honesty never hurt anyone."

"You could not be further from the truth," Heather said, so Charles didn't have to.

*******************************************

Hoping to drive out his infatuation, Edmund threw himself into his work, doing perhaps more than was required for what seemed like an easy sell. When he was not talking to potential stockholders, he was pouring over the books from his trunk, hoping to lose himself in the numbers.

"Mr. Bingley, you cannot come to the country, only to shut yourself up in a room like that," Mr. Wilkinson said. "You will make yourself old before your time." That was an invitation to an assembly, albeit a private one, and Edmund had no means to refuse. In fact, he was eager to go, and prove himself as detached as he wanted to be.

He knew the crowd, at least the male crowd, upon entering the hall. Nonetheless there was another round of introductions, to wives and some unmarried daughters. Only one of them distinctly gave him the cold shoulder, some feigned interest but quickly moved on, but most unmarried women were eager to present themselves to the bachelor and disappointed when he affirmed that he would only be in Somerset for a few weeks, until his business was concluded. This was met with a good deal more exaggerated sighs than he would have preferred, but there was nothing to be done about that. He was without a wife again, and with his financial prospects increasing, his marriage ones would only do the same.

Edmund had almost forgotten, at least momentarily, the issue foremost on his mind for several days now until he was introduced to Mr. Wright again, having not seen him since his first day. "And may I present my wife, Mrs. Wright?"

"Mr. Bingley."

"Mrs. Wright."

It was all done with the utmost formality, and no preference shown on his part or on her part. Had she tossed his memory aside so quickly? Was she not as innocent as she'd seemed in the barn? Their eyes met when she rose from the curtsey, the blue almost flashing against the lamp light as if to burn him, and it took all of his abilities to regain his composure before anyone realized it was lost. There was only one other thing he was sure of, which was that she was not unaffected by their meeting. Would that he could at least kiss her hand in greeting! No, it was no good to fantasize about such things.

He danced a single dance with some young lady that he did not bother to remember the name of. There was no possibility that he could have eyes for anyone else in the room but Mrs. Wright, the one person he was forbidden to look at. It made for an exhaustive evening.

Edmund learned that Mrs. Wright's reputation was impeccable, that the marriage was arranged from afar and had yet to result in any children (considering how much older Mr. Wright was, this could only be expected), and that she only ever danced with her husband, not that he was considering asking her. He did not have the association to do so, and even if he did, it would have been disastrous.

Mr. Wright did not appear in the foul mood. Did he not know or was he an accomplished actor? There was little reason to suspect the newcomer, not yet arrived before the incident. Since Edmund had heard nothing since his arrival, he assumed that Mr. Wright remained in the dark about his wife's infidelity. With any luck, it would pass into history without being recorded, and they would move on, two souls who momentarily shared a world together that did not otherwise exist.

Where did these romantic feelings come from? But he could not chastise himself without looking droll, and that would not do. He remained aloof but pleasant when approached, as was his intention. If the ladies of Somerset thought him an overly serious businessman, so be it. In a few weeks, perhaps less, he would be gone, and Mrs. Wright would be gone from his memory and he from hers.

"Mr. Bingley, I believe Mrs. Wilkinson is looking for you."

He turned at her voice behind him. He did not have a mirror for the expression on his face. Besides, he was focused on hers. How could she look so pale and forsaken, and so radiant at the same time? How could anyone even dream to exist in the same world as this woman? Did she know the effect she had on him? "Thank you, Mrs. Wright." He bowed, she curtseyed, and with her mission completed, passed by him.

And thus their hands touched, just briefly, knocked together in the hot and crowded room, and neither could say it was by accident or unwelcomed before they turned to continue with the pretense that it hadn't happened, or meant everything to them.

It was their only contact that evening, but it was enough for him to consider feigning illness if the assembly did not end soon, which thankfully it did. Mrs. Wilkinson, a bit of a doting mother, commented on his pallor in the carriage ride home. "I thought you grew up in the country, Mr. Bingley. The air does not suit you?"

"Some men view assemblies as a necessary evil," he said, which caused Mr. Wilkinson to chuckle. "I would have to at least partially agree with them."

Edmund could only agree in some respects. The evil was his own inclinations, which flew in the face of his conscience as he contemplated the expression on Mrs. Wright's – Julia's – face and the feel of her gloved hand against his over and over. Despite his exhaustion, he would not find an easy rest that night.

... Next Chapter - Darcy Back-Up


	16. Darcy Back Up

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note:** The story "The Price of Family" is **now out in paperback **as the book "The Plight of the Darcy Brothers." (Sourcebooks wanted Darcy in the title) It is pretty much the same as the story posted here, but with much better editing for grammar and consistency. I'm not asking anyone to buy it. If you do it to support me, that's great. If not, I totally understand and am committed to keeping fanfic free. I'm mostly posting this because some people like reading these stories in book form and also because some people bought my first book thinking it wasn't fanfic they had read before. I don't like unhappy readers, so you're all being told this now so there's no confusion.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 16 - Darcy Back-Up

"But do you love her?" Eliza begged.

Charles did not want to shake his head. He did not want to disappoint his sister. "I cannot say I will not, that it is not headed that way. I am afraid to go further."

"You need not declare yourself so early. You have known this girl how long? Weeks?"

"Three. But wouldn't a courtship request all but do it?"

"It is not an engagement; it is a courtship. If done privately, it can be ended without any scandal and neither party injured."

"Except for her feelings."

"And yours," she said. "You cannot act contrary to your interests, if they are just, and you wish to pursue this woman. You have never shown such a focused interest in a woman before. That means something, at least to me."

Charles frowned and looked out the window. The landscape of Sussex was very beautiful, and he soaked in some of the sun and went hunting with Matthew Turner. It was a pleasant escape from his pressing matters in Town, and he got to see his nephew, who was now smiling and laughing at the funny faces he would make. "I cannot lead her on."

"Do you intend to? Is that your sole intention, in showing interest in her, or are you looking for a marriage partner? It seemed to me that it was the latter."

"It will happen despite my best intentions, if I do not marry her. And I'm not sure I can." He added, "The doctor says I must try."

"I think he's right. You cannot live your life alone, Charles. It doesn't suit you."

She knew about Dr. Creswell (though not his name), but not about Paul, of course. To live a life with Paul! Even though he made sure to think of it as a passing fancy, he could more happily imagine a life with him than with Miss Emerson, for all of her positive traits and things she could provide that no man could. No, he could not get lost in that dream. He had been down that road too many times. "You are right."

"You can give it time, Charles. You are known to be a cautious man anyway. Why not live up to your reputation? Not everyone must fall in love at first sight."

If only he hadn't already done it! "Yes, I suppose so."

*******************************************

Edmund knew he was caught. On the one part he could conclude his business quickly, perhaps even a bit rushed but still in a satisfactory manner, and be gone from this place. On the other, he could stay and risk seeing the woman he dreamed of incessantly, when he was sleeping and when he was awake and his mind should have been elsewhere.

He was unfortunate in that, having been once burned, he did not trust his manservant enough to have him begin making more discreet investigations about Mrs. Wright's situation. He did not think he could have brought himself to it anyway – the ultimate reversal. He was the other man, the heartless seducer. He ran into Mr. Wright only on occasion, and Mrs. Wright only at church and one other dinner party where they said not two words to each other, and not because of disinterest. He was never so interested in memorizing his dinner plate's designs in an effort to keep his eyes from rising to meet hers. He suspected she was doing the same thing. How could her husband not know, sitting beside him, that all of his thoughts were directed at his wife?

_Now you see_, Edmund thought, chastising himself. _It happens to the most intelligent and innocent of men_. He had to laugh, and when asked about it by the woman next to him who was showing too much interest in his person, he gave a noncommittal answer about an old memory.

It seemed like the entire country was not in the mood for business but for sport. The heat was not excessive, but it did put one off, and he began to think he was on a fool's errand with his slow progress, as his social engagements as a guest of the Wilkinsons were greater in number than his business meetings. He asked, before he could stop himself, that his manservant bring out his new suit for the next assembly, which was properly a ball. He wouldn't talk to her, of course, but would it not be justified to exchange a few words? Three weeks had passed since their introduction; surely he could make some mundane conversation with a wife of his host's neighbor. The whole way to the ball he schemed incessantly on ways to relieve his suffering for a few words of hers, directed at him, and spent the first half hour stalking the floor before Mr. Wright arrived, sans his wife.

He could not take it. He made a roundabout, polite inquiry about how he'd rarely seen Mr. Wright not without his wife, and eventually was told she was taken ill. Those few words, however true or false, were enough to drive him mad. Was it simply a cold or was she avoiding him? Was she with another lover? Had she been discovered? Every conspiracy he could dream of consumed all of his attention so that he had to be prodded into asking someone to dance, as many ladies were without partners, and even when he did, he messed up several of the steps and made no conversation.

"You look positively vexed," Mrs. Wilkinson said after their return. "You need not come to every event, if you wish." She always treated him with such kindness. He suspected it was because they had no children of their own. "I apologize for the laziness of your company, but it is the summer."

"I am used to the pace of London," he admitted. "I apologize; I had something that disagreed with me." She was kind enough to nod like she believed him.

Edmund barely slept that night, and sat in the bath a long time the next morning. The water was long-cold when he rose, put on his bathrobe, and was shaved. Only after he was dressed did he have the courage to address his manservant. "I have a task you may find odious, but I wish it done all the same."

"Sir."

"Mrs. Wright is ill, or that was her excuse for not being present at the ball yesterday. It is imperative to me to learn the nature of her illness." He did not mince words. "I do not care how much money it costs to do it discreetly, which is the only way it may be done, but I must have the answer as soon as possible."

His manservant merely nodded. "Yes, sir." The understanding was total; his master was engaged in an affair with the woman or was planning on one. Like a good servant, he did not show any disapproval. He probably had none. He was trained to have none.

"Thank you," Edmund said in passing as he turned to his books, only to succeed in jotting down a few notes before staring blankly out the window at the field that separated Cheswick Park from the Wright property.

*******************************************

It took his manservant three days, and the older man was clearly terrified to approach his new master with the answer. They were not old chums. It was a spur hiring after a previous disaster of a servant. "It's a very private matter, Mr. Bingley."

"Go on."

"It cost twelve pounds in total. For that I do profusely apologize, Mr. Bingley – "

"It's quite all right." He had his brandy ready. "Who was your source?"

"Through many mediums, the chief cook, who came with Mrs. Wright when she married Mr. Wright, and therefore is more loyal to her than the rest of the staff. The rest of them are local hires, including her lady-maid. He heard from someone who heard from the abigail, so this may be misconstrued – "

"I understand."

"Shortly before the ball, Mrs. Wright discovered that she was very likely to be with child. It was too early to tell, but there were encouraging signs."

"Mr. Wright was not pleased with this news?"

"Mr. Wright is impotent. He has been with her since their wedding night."

Edmund could feel his heart sink deeper into his chest. "And?"

"And there was a discussion – a very livid discussion – between master and mistress, so that she had cause to miscarry. She was too swollen – her face that is – for her to attend the ball."

He could barely breathe, but eventually managed to get out the question, "Did she give a name?"

"She did not, sir."

He nodded. His neck was so stiff from pressure, the action was painful. "You are dismissed. And I rely on your discretion on what you have heard."

"Yes, of course, sir."

He only heard the door shut. He didn't see it with his eyes buried beneath his hands. Unlike his usual manic method of pacing out a problem, he stayed in that position so long it began to hurt his limbs, and even this he ignored for some time. Whatever pain coursing through his body was so rightfully deserved, his penance. He could not fathom Mrs. Wright, and how she had suffered, and how she must have cursed him. And he deserved every harsh thought and word, all of which she had endured on his behalf, for his mistake, for his loss of control. He was supposed to be the gentleman, the one who wasn't the vicious cad, little better than a man who'd stolen a woman's honor with no intentions to do the right thing. And he couldn't do the right thing, even if he wanted to.

He cried out, and swung his hand across his desk, throwing aside all of his books and his glass, which shattered on the floor. All that was left was some paper and his inkwell. He looked to it for an answer, and it provided one.

*******************************************

_Dear Mr. and Mrs. Darcy,_

_If you can possibly spare the time, I must entreat you to come visit me in Somerset. The weather is quite lovely – not too hot – and it is not terribly far from you._

_My hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson, are very eager hosts, and lovers of young children. They have told me repeatedly that they would not be put out in the least by my inviting you or my niece and nephews, and have implored me to stress that in my invitation. Cheswick Park is fine and your presence would be a lively and welcome diversion from my business, which they feel (and probably correctly so) that I am all too invested in. I hope you will respond quickly as to your intentions, and I sincerely hope you can spare the time for a few weeks at most._

_Yours,_

_Edmund Bingley_

_P.S. Georgie, I did something wrong and I don't know how to make it right._

"I would have come anyway," Georgie said, returning the letter to her husband. "He's not as subtle as he thinks. Eager to have three screaming children?"

"They're not always screaming," Geoffrey said. "Sometimes they nap. And I have no doubt that if his hosts had reservations, he would have invited us and not explicitly the children. What do you suppose he's done?"

"I have no idea, but since he's written to me, I can only assume it's a disaster and that I should pack as much weaponry as possible."

"Perhaps you assume to much."

"You think I am wrong?"

He grinned. "I mean to say, pack a _reasonable_ amount of weaponry, not all of it."

*******************************************

Brian and Nadezhda Maddox made one of their rare trips to the north. Usually they only went as far as Chesterton to be with his brother for the holidays, but they made an exception. Brian knew Bingley was contemplating handing partial control of the business over to his son, and though Brian was officially retired, he was still heavily invested in it, monetarily and emotionally.

"You're looking well," Bingley said. Brian had aged rapidly in the last few years, accelerated by the pain in his back he would never admit to in public, but he seemed better, and his spirits were up since the fall.

"There's a Chinese masseuse in Town," he said. "We got him to come to the house." Brain walked with a cane, but he still wore one of his swords – the short one – in the sash of his kimono. "Plus, Nadezhda's been taking lessons." He made a little gesture with his hands, which earned him a little swipe from his wife.

"We're sorry to put you out," Jane said.

"We needed a change of scene," Nadezhda said. "Thank you for your hospitality."

"Of course, Your Highness."

They were in no rush, and it was some time before Bingley handed Brian the letters from Edmund, which were all business concerns. Brian looked through them. "He's always been very talented with money. It's not the worst talent to have."

"I don't want to throw him into a business that's so consuming," Bingley said.

"You're afraid he'll make no time for his personal life?"

"I wasn't going to say it quite like that, but yes. On the other hand, perhaps he's learned from his mistakes."

Brian grinned. "One can only hope." He wasn't interested in the details of how the business was going so much as how Edmund was personally doing, so once that was established, the conversation moved on, and Bingley was eager to know about his other son. Brian shook his head. "I know what you know. He's thinking of courting some woman he met at a ball. Oh! And she's the sister of your Vicar or something."

"He said that, but he told me not to mention it to Mr. Emerson," Bingley said. "Obviously he'll mention it when the time comes, as Mr. Emerson is in charge of his sister's affairs. A very pleasant man. I assume his sister is likewise, or Charles would not be interested."

"This is his first serious prospect, no?"

"That he's told me about, or that I've heard about through other people. He is my son. I would be the last person he would consult about his social life."

"So you are reliant on spies like me."

Bingley let Monkey climb into his lap and scratched him on the head. "Of course. Eliza probably knows the most but she's not going to say anything, even to Jane, unless it's good news that he wants out."

"Thick as thieves, those two."

"They're twins," Bingley replied. "And of all my children, the least likely to be dishonest."

"Are you implying something about your other children?"

"To be fair, only one of them, and she knows I mean it in only the most loving and complimentary sense," Bingley said with a grin.

*******************************************

Mr. and Mrs. Darcy (the younger) arrived at Cheswick Park in Somerset only a few days after the invitation reply, their three children in tow. Their reception was cheerful. Mrs. Wilkinson was eager to meet the children; Edmund had not been lying when he said she was a bit motherly and would enjoy small children, at least in the space of time that they would be visiting. Brian hid behind his mother and it took the temptation of playing with Mrs. Wilkinson's puppy to get him to come out. Alison and William were on their best behavior, which was saying a lot for William. After everyone was properly introduced, Georgie and her host saw about putting the children down for a nap and Alison with a book before the adults could refresh themselves with a late lunch.

Released to rest themselves, Georgie and Geoffrey did not do precisely that. Instead they summoned Edmund to their chambers, intent on finding out just what brought them to Somerset so suddenly.

Edmund's expression was completely different from the polite man at lunch. He shed that mask and the despair was visible on his face. "It's not a business thing."

"I figured it wasn't," Georgie said. "And for the record, I am not your personal privateer."

"You would be if he asked you to," Geoffrey said.

"You're not helping."

"It's not that," Edmund repeated. "I can't see how it would come to that. No, I need you for something else of the utmost importance." He took a deep breath. It was clear he had been preparing this for a long time. "I need you to make friends with Julia Wright."

... Next Chapter - In Which Edmund Gets What is Coming To Him


	17. In Which Edmund Gets What is ComingToHim

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note:** The story "The Price of Family" is **now out in paperback **as the book "The Plight of the Darcy Brothers." (Sourcebooks wanted Darcy in the title) It is pretty much the same as the story posted here, but with much better editing for grammar and consistency. I'm not asking anyone to buy it. If you do it to support me, that's great. If not, I totally understand and am committed to keeping fanfic free. I'm mostly posting this because some people like reading these stories in book form and also because some people bought my first book thinking it wasn't fanfic they had read before. I don't like unhappy readers, so you're all being told this now so there's no confusion.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 17 - In Which Edmund Gets What is Coming To Him

"Mrs. Wright," Edmund began, to a very eager audience of two, "is the wife of Mr. Wilkinson's neighbor. Their land borders this estate. As far as I know, they've been married two years, but with no child – Mr. Wright is impotent."

Geoffrey and Georgie exchanged looks but said nothing.

"Sometime in the week before I wrote you, as I have since learned, Mrs. Wright had occasion to miscarry, if that's what it was. She began showing very early signs of a child, Mr. Wright took a hand to her so hard it might have caused the reaction." He paused, building himself up for it. "The child was mine."

He was not prepared for Georgiana's assault. Before he could move, or even breathe, she went from a sitting position to holding him by his cravat and forcing him against the wall. "Edmund Fitzwilliam Bingley!"

"I said I was wrong!"

"And you want me to apologize for you? Can you even begin to fathom what you've done to this woman?"

Edmund looked to Geoffrey, who was also standing now, but he didn't offer any help, physical or verbal. "I know it was wrong. I knew it was wrong – "

"But you, of all people, seduced a married woman and left her to her husband's devices."

"Georgie, my neck – "

"I don't care about your fucking neck!"

"He is turning blue," Geoffrey said in a mild voice. "Or at least changing color. It will be a rather odd conversation at dinner when we have to explain why he's dead."

Georgie growled, and throttled him back and forth against the wall one last time before releasing him. He slid down to the floor, pulling away his tie for air. "I deserved that."

"You have yet to tell me anything I don't know," she said.

Geoffrey was less emotional, at least visibly. "How did this come about?"

"I met her on my way to Somerset," Edmund said, still gasping a little. "It started raining and I took shelter in an abandoned barn, and she was there."

"Did she tell you she was married?"

"Yes. And I told her I was divorced. It was something that never should have happened and we've had no contact since, but when she didn't show to a ball ... well, I made inquiries."

"Those are some inquiries," Geoffrey said as Georgie paced angrily behind him.

Edmund nodded. "I might as well fully confess ... I have not stopped thinking of her for a moment since we parted. I have done everything to end my business quickly and drive her from my mind and my sight. And to my knowledge, I have not been discovered. But now, I couldn't possibly abandon her. I must do something. What, I do not know." He added, "I'm not good at dealing with women."

"To state the obvious yet again!" Georgie screamed.

"_Jorgi-chan_," Geoffrey said in Japanese, "_I think he's serious about her_."

"_That doesn't make it right_."

"_No, but we're going to help him anyway, aren't we?_"

"_Of course. He's my brother_." Georgie collected herself and turned to Edmund, speaking in English. "What do you want from me?"

"Specifically? I don't know. I am unable to conceive of a plan – or even a goal. But you have reason to befriend her, and I do not."

"Answer me seriously: Do you think she has any interest in renewing a conversation with you?"

"I cannot pretend to know her feelings – "

"Guess."

"Maybe. Before the ball, I would have said yes."

Georgie crossed her arms. "I'll do this for her, not for you."

One thing that could not be denied was his sincerity.

"I understand. Please do."

*******************************************

A day after their arrival, the Darcys and Edmund Bingley went to church with the Wilkinsons. There, Mr. Wilkinson introduced his new guests to his neighbors. Fortunately Mr. and Mrs. Wright were in attendance, and Georgiana managed to slip in line about paying a call and Mrs. Wright gave a vague affirmative, which did not seem to displease her husband. Edmund looked at his hands, which also seemed to be of great interest to Mrs. Wright. Georgie, noting all of this, nudged her husband to make conversation with Mr. Wright for the duration of their short introduction and he did.

By the time they returned to the house, and the children were so wound up that their nurse could barely handle them. Brian was trying to nudge Mrs. Wilkinson's puppy out from under the desk, where he was hiding from a tormenting William. He cried with happiness when Mr. Wilkinson reached in with his long arm to retrieve the puppy and pass him to Brian, who took him in his arms and held him against his chest.

"He's so good with animals," Mrs. Wilkinson said with a nod of approval to Geoffrey, as if he had something to do with it. "A very sweet child."

"Perhaps he will be an excellent horseman," Mr. Wilkinson said, to which Geoffrey was more ready to agree. As they brunched, Alison asked to join them, and their hosts could hardly refuse her as she showed her drawings to her mother for approval. Though they were about rather mundane things, like her surroundings, her attempts to capture them always had a certain flair.

"Very nice," Georgie said, the approval Alison wanted. Perhaps Alison knew praise would come instantaneously from her father, who couldn't draw anyway. "Very beautiful flowers. Are those the ones in the sun room?"

"Yes, Mama."

"I think they are wonderful."

"To draw so well at such an age," Mrs. Wilkinson said. "I am four times her age and cannot make that claim! You should be very proud of yourself, Miss Darcy."

"Thank you, Mrs. Wilkinson."

She curtseyed and left, and the Wilkinsons were full of comments on the politeness of their daughter and the good behavior of their children (William's earlier antics aside), and the Darcys exchanged a knowing smile and continued with their meal.

Edmund they lost to business, as he still had to conduct some, though they could see from the look in his eyes his heart was not in it as he disappeared into the study, emerging for dinner.

The following day, Mrs. Wilkinson and Mrs. Darcy called on Mrs. Wright. "It would be good for her to speak to someone her age," Mrs. Wilkinson said on the carriage ride over. "She is so isolated there, with only her husband for company. It is good enough for me, but I am not young and full of energy."

"You do not give yourself credit on the latter, Mrs. Wilkinson."

"Tosh! But this is very kind of you, Mrs. Darcy."

Georgie had long dismissed any notion that the Wilkinsons were suspect of Edmund or even Georgie's reason for being there. Edmund covered his trail, and the children were an excellent distraction.

As the call was expected, they were admitted, and ushered into the bright sunroom. Mrs. Wright smiled, but her hands were nervously twisted together, and she had a small amount of makeup under her left eye.

Their reception was brief for a country morning. Mrs. Wright was hardly rude, just openly nervous, and obviously not accustomed to visitors, for she was often lacking at what to say, and Georgiana found herself forced into the position of asking the questions, since Mrs. Wright would not take the lead and ask about _her_ family, at least not at first, and then it was restricted only to the children. They had some common ground – both had studied in France, though Mrs. Wright in Paris, and she was younger than Georgiana. She had been married, of course, even younger. There was much discussion of the local news – nothing of any substance– that made for a good introduction but little knowledge, and when they felt they were straining their host, who was being so polite and good, they made their excuses and ended the call. On the way out, in passing, Mrs. Wright did mention that she was a great walker, especially in the early mornings, and Georgiana replied that she was the same, like her Aunt Darcy (though not _quite_ like her Aunt Darcy in some respects, certainly).

It was Mrs. Wilkinson who provided most of the commentary on the return. "You must not be harsh, Mrs. Darcy. She is not used to guests."

"I have no intention of being so."

"In fact, this may be the only time I have been to their house without my husband. There have been some dinners, but nothing so intimate as just the four of us – not as though we're family."

"Is Mr. Wright not from the area?"

"He is – though he did not spend his childhood here. His uncle owned the manor before him, and he was the only heir. Five years ago, when his uncle took ill, he called his nephew to the estate, which he had not visited since he was very young. Hardly anyone recognized him, not even my husband. He was quite a dedicated bachelor, or so we understood, living the Londoner life, but the manor was not entailed, and the uncle made it conditional. Mr. Wright – the younger – had to marry to inherit."

"He must have chosen very quickly."

"We were not involved in his choice, though we thought at the time he was kind to take on Mrs. Wright. Her father was very ill, and did not have a large fortune, so he gained little from the connection. In fact, but a month into their marriage, her father died, and Mrs. Wright was in black for most of her year as a newlywed. At first Mr. Wright appeared the patient husband – certainly more patient than my husband would have been, if I was in jet so soon after our honeymoon." She stopped there, though there was more to tell.

Georgiana looked for the best way to say it. "You imply that your opinion has changed."

"They are a private couple. Most people are in this town. I can understand a young husband and wife, alone, without family connections or children to fill the house. It must be, in its own way, a terrible strain on them. Yet Mr. Wright continues on and we see Mrs. Wright in church every week. I suppose I haven't been a good neighbor to her."

"That is not true. You are obviously concerned, but you wish to give the couple space. There is nothing wrong with that."

Mrs. Wilkinson smiled. "However long Mr. Bingley's work takes him, you are welcome here. I hope your presence will be a boost to Mrs. Wright, who has been so sad as of late. I suspect it will be."

Georgiana readily agreed.

*******************************************

Edmund was not pleased with Georgiana, not because of her work, but because of the way she received him upon her return. "It is not your business. She is a married woman."

"I called you here – "

" – to see if there was some way I could aid this obviously suffering woman, and perhaps I can and perhaps I cannot, but I am sure of one thing right now, which is that you will not calm the situation." She sat down at the table. "I must write Eliza. It's been so long since our last correspondence."

"You are stalling!"

"I am not stalling. I am requesting privacy so I can concentrate on answering our sister's questions on motherhood. And yes, I am refusing to answer your queries about Mrs. Wright, as none of the answers she gave today in any way concern you." She raised her eyes to him. "Must I be even less subtle by pointing to the door?"

Edmund stalked out, and Geoffrey appeared around the door. With his wife's approving glance – though she did draw fresh paper for her letter – he entered and shut the door behind him. "You're not making it easy for him."

"I have no intention of doing so. Let him suffer a little if he must."

"You're cruel."

"I am practical." She opened the ink, and then closed it. "You are considering forwarding their affair."

He shrugged. "I don't know. I wouldn't put it like that."

"You will not face it, then."

"Georgie, he's in love with her."

"It's not the word I would use."

"But it might be accurate. When did you become so cold? Not given to a little romance behind closed doors?" He grinned, and succeeded in getting a return smile out of her, if only briefly. "It is against his every interest to pursue anything with this woman, even the faintest acquaintance. If what he has already done is discovered, it will ruin his entire business here, possibly doom his hope for a controlling interest in the company, and put him in bad standing with your parents for a very long time. And when has Edmund Bingley ever been so utterly determined to go against his every financial, domestic, and social interests in the name of some impossible goal, particularly a romantic one?"

She could not answer him. He leaned over and kissed her. "I know you're being harsh because you can't be mad at Mr. Wright and Edmund is the closest available target. After all, he is at least partially responsible. And he's used the most drastic measure he knows – calling in you – to make it right. Allow him that."

"You know me suspiciously well, Mr. Darcy."

"It is not suspicious. It is merely in my best interest," Geoffrey said. "I will not go so far as to say I would bless an adulterous affair between Edmund and anyone, even Mrs. Wright. I am saying that however unfortunate and of scandalous nature they are, his feelings may very well be real."

"That does not help."

"No, of course not. Love only complicates things."

She took one of her husband's hands. "What am I supposed to say to this woman? I think Edmund expects me to offer to slay her husband."

"I'm sure it's hovering in the back of his mind, but he's politely keeping it there, and not in front. Take very small steps. Talk to her. Make that womanly conversation you so resent."

"I never said that!"

"You did many times when we were children."

"When we were_ children_, Geoffrey."

"I suspect it has not changed. But you will do the right thing anyway, and befriend this married woman who has no business carrying on with your brother and he with her, for her situation alone, but also for Edmund's, because you wish him all the happiness in the world even if you will see him suffer a bit for it."

"It seems we all suffer a bit for our happiness," she said, "except for you, you smarmy, all-knowing – "

" – and you love me for it."

She hit him, but only a slap, and only on his chest, and it was in jest, because there was a clear delineation between when she struck in jest and when she was serious, and the more obvious way of telling (as an observer) is that she followed it by a kiss.

*******************************************

"Do you really like it?"

"Yes, I really like it."

"You're not just saying that."

Edmund removed his pen from the mouth of his nephew, who was sitting on his lap, and looked again at Alison. "I am not just 'saying that.' You are very proficient, and it will only improve in time." Brian tried to escape his arms again, but he held him to keep him from falling over as Alison curled up her latest drawing. "Your mother drew when she was younger. I wonder if she still does."

"She has lots of drawings from Japan."

"Then I suppose that answers my question."

"Did she play an instrument?"

Edmund grinned, but held himself back from telling the story of how she rid them of her last governess. "She did not care for instruments. Or most womanly activities, which should not surprise you. She played piano only for a short while and because she was forced, and her violin always mysteriously broke and she made the strings into a bow to shoot arrows. It didn't work, but it was an admirable try. I was terrified of her."

"You were?"

"I was much younger than her. And smaller. Like your brothers are smaller than you." He looked down at Brian, who looked up at him with a grin showing off his new teeth. "Speaking of, where is William? I am deficient at watching him. I should not have passed him off to your nurse so readily."

"Fishin," Brian said.

"Are their lakes here, Uncle Edmund?"

He frowned. "I don't believe so. Brian, you are mistaken."

"Fishin!" He tugged at his uncle's vest. "William fishes."

"He can swim, can't he?" Edmund said, imagining the worst. He stood, carrying his nephew with him, as they went in search of William Darcy. "There's not a pond about where he's drowned himself?"

"He can swim," Alison said as they began their search, deciding not to risk her parent's ire for the moment before at least running through the house. And they did, quite expediently, before nearly crashing into the exasperated nurse.

"I don't know where the young master gets it, but I am sorry. Please tell Mr. and Mrs. – "

"There's no need, as long as he's safe," Edmund said. "What did he do?"

"And what is that smell?" Alison held her nose.

"Uncle Edmund!" William shouted, announcing his presence behind Nurse as he stepped out of the kitchen, barefoot and reeking of dead fish – for that was precisely what he carried. Though it was wrapped in fishing line that was tied to a pole, this particular fish was long-dead and quite obviously from the ice room, not a pond. "I went fishing."

"So you did," was all Edmund could say to that.

... Next Chapter - Mothers and Daughters


	18. Mothers and Daughters

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note: **I will be away (as in camping) for the next week and this story will not have the Sunday/Monday update, and when the Thursday/Friday update goes up depends on when I come home**. **Sorry for the delay. I'll try to make sure there's very few to none for the next 40 chapters of this story.**  
**

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 18 - Mothers and Daughters

Georgiana had an early start as usual, removing herself from Geoffrey's clingy grasp but succeeding in not fully waking him as she put on a kimono. It was not yet light, and she had fewer freedoms in her comings and goings than she had in Lancashire, but in the very early hours, she could sit quietly at least, and descend into her own world, however limited or unlimited it was by her mind.

Her thoughts followed her, as they usually did, and she let them. Eventually they would rise up and fly away from her on their own, but that took time. Geoffrey was right, of course. Edmund was at the very least enamored of Mrs. Wright, and most likely in love. He suffered when he thought of her and equally when he didn't; it was plain as day on his face. She could not separate Edmund from Mrs. Wright's situation, however altruistic he asked her to be about it by doing so. If she separated Mrs. Wright from her husband, it was on Edmund's behalf and to his benefit. Geoffrey made his peace with it. Maybe it was time for her to do the same.

She sunk into her meditation as Geoffrey walked when he was unsteady – one gentle step at a time. She would talk to Mrs. Wright. She would learn some truth of the matter and be a better judge herself. If it brought about the end of a marriage, all things were finite anyway.

Georgie was lost in the imagery of a mountain, slowly dissolving as the wind and rain carried the sand away, when Alison's voice startled her. "Mama."

Georgie was not in the condition to jump, or be alarmed, so her voice was very even when she opened her eyes to her sitting room. "What is it?"

"May I sit with you?"

It wasn't something Alison had requested in a long time. Maybe because Brian was always there instead, or because Alison was older, and bigger, and it wasn't so practical. Georgie raised her arms and lifted the blanket she used to cover herself when she meditated and Alison climbed in next to her, cross-legged on the sofa. "What is it, Ali-chan?"

"You were the only one awake. You always wake up first, and I didn't want to be alone."

"You have Nurse."

"Nurse is asleep." Alison, like Georgie, was an early riser, and Alison wasn't as used to relying on Nurse as William and Brian were. She let her mother wrap the blanket over her.

"Do you like it here? We're only visiting for a short time."

"I don't understand it. We don't know Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson."

"Have they been unkind to you?"

"No. They've been very nice. And Uncle Edmund has been very nice. And I really like the house. They have all kinds of neat things that are all dusty, like really old things."

"I'm sure they do." She tried to guess at what was on her daughter's mind. "Do you want to find some children to play with who aren't your brothers? There are some local children. I'm sure they would make friends with you."

"The girls all want to do girly things. You don't like that."

"So? Just because I don't like something does not mean it's bad." She smiled, trying to be reassuring. "Your Mama is a strange woman, Ali-chan. You know that. Other women liked girly things when they were girls. Your Aunt Eliza. All of your Aunt Darcys – they were very accomplished young ladies, like you are. Everyone was very proud of them."

"Were you?"

Even in her relaxed state, it was hard for her to find the right words to answer that. "I thought what they were doing was silly, but I was wrong. It wasn't silly. They were being themselves. No one person is like the other, not in this whole universe." She added, "You should remember this day, because I will very rarely admit to being wrong."

Alison covered her mouth as she giggled, and Georgie kissed her on the cheek. "May I go with you today?"

"When?"

"When you go to talk to Mrs. Wright about Uncle Edmund."

"Alison!"

"I didn't tell anyone," she said quickly. "Especially not Mrs. Wilkinson. And I won't tell, I promise."

"But you were eavesdropping on your parents."

Alison looked down. "Yes."

"You cannot continue this habit, Ali-chan. You will get yourself – and _other people_ – into more trouble than you know."

"I won't tell!"

"You just told me. That proves how well your lips are sealed. What I do with my own time with my acquaintances is none of your affair. More to the point, it is not appropriate."

"I'm sorry, Mama."

"If you are lonely, this not the way to tell me," Georgie said. "Your father will decide on your punishment."

"No! Don't tell Papa."

"He is your papa and he should discipline you."

"Please! I don't want to disappoint him."

"And you want to disappoint me?"

Alison did exactly what Georgie didn't want, even though it could not be unexpected, which was to start crying, the exact response to solicit the most sympathy. But Alison didn't cry for sympathy. She cried because she was truly upset. "I don't know what to do! I don't know how to make you happy."

Georgie was not ready for this level of heartache, so early in the morning – not on any day, much less with what was left to face today. She pulled her daughter in and stroked her hair. "You do not have to make me happy. You always have made me happy, even when you do something that is wrong. It was a mistake to eavesdrop and if you'd known that, you would not have done it." She wiped the tears from her daughter's cheeks. "You are my baby girl, and you will never, _ever_ make me unhappy." It wasn't true in every sense of the word, but it was true in the way that was important. "You will make mistakes and you will learn right from wrong. Spying on your parents is wrong. Your mama would not be worth much if she didn't at least try to teach you that. Do you understand?"

Alison nodded, but she was still tearing.

"You will have to be punished, so you remember, but it will not be terrible. And afterwards you and I will go out and do something together and I will explain all about Mrs. Wright, if you promise to keep it a secret."

"I will!" She tugged at her mother's robe, so eager to please. "I promise I will."

"Only make promises you can keep, Ali-chan."

"_I_ _promise_," she said in Japanese.

"Very good." Georgie kissed her on the forehead. "Now go wash up. Nurse will be awake soon if she's not already and you must be dressed for breakfast. I love you."

"I love you, Mama." Steady enough to stand up and separate, she curtseyed and left the room.

As the main door closed, the one connecting the sitting room to the bedchamber opened and Geoffrey leaned on the handle, rubbing his eyes. "What was that about?"

"Why one should not eavesdrop." But she could not bring herself to say it so lightly.

"She's our daughter. What do you expect, with the combined powers of Geoffrey Darcy and Georgiana Bingley, the two biggest troublemakers in Derbyshire?"

"I hope they're not _combined_."

Geoffrey smiled and sat down next to her. "We must find her someone her age to play with. We've not been particularly forward about introducing ourselves to Lancashire. There must be some other recluse families with children of the appropriate age and gender."

"I will take her to town this afternoon. Tomorrow at latest."

"And I must discipline her?"

"You must. I will be so busy forwarding Edmund's adulterous affair."

Perhaps sensing his wife still so unsettled, he put an arm around her. "Do you remember how awkward you were, at eight?"

"Do you? Because you have no business remembering."

"No, but I am willing to venture a guess," he said. "A mother who can kill people with her touch is rather hard to live up to."

"And perhaps someone you are less eager to touch."

He kissed her. "I've never felt that way."

*******************************************

Shortly after breakfast, Georgiana left dressed for walking in the proper English sense, aside for her sandals (if some man was so improper as to look down). The property was large, and the line hard to distinguish. The Wilkinsons, who had a clear appreciation for nature, left their property purposely clear of the inconveniencies of modernity that maintained their wealth – factory and workers and the like.

"Mrs. Darcy."

She had been aware of the approach for a long time, but didn't want to appear as if she was hunting for someone. "Mrs. Wright."

They curtseyed in mutual understanding.

"Do you prefer to walk alone?"

"Not this morning, I think," Georgie said, and they began to stroll together. "As much as I love them, I just needed a moment away from the children."

"Oh! Did you not bring your Nurse?"

"I did, but they are very accustomed to my presence anyway," she said. "And a little demanding of it."

"How old?"

"Eight, three, and two," she said. "Alison is the oldest and the only girl."

"Does she take after her mother?"

"A little too much, I think sometimes," she said with an eye-roll. "She's very inquisitive."

"I see."

Georgie looked at Mrs. Wright, then back at the road. "As much as I love discussing my children, I would rather not dally on what I came here to do. And yes, Edmund did send for us."

"He did!" Mrs. Wright's face went from full of hope to dread until she caught herself, and then she blushed. "So you know."

"I don't usually wander about the country, following my brother's business coattails," she said. "Fortunately if divorce has taught him one thing, it is that he has a tendency to get in over his head."

Mrs. Wright took her hand away from her face only to insist, "Please don't blame him."

"He is at least partially to blame. Considering how gentlemen are trained and expected to act as such, I would even say he is mostly or entirely to blame."

"He is not," she said. There was an abusive fierceness in her voice, but it was one of anger towards herself, not Edmund or her current accuser. "He was – is – a good man. A kind man – "

"He left you to suffer for all of his kindness." Seeing Mrs. Wright crumpling, she softened her tone. "If Edmund wanted to send his apologies, or even continue an affair in the hopes of some satisfaction between the two of you that could never be public, he would not have sent for me. He would have further employed his man, who was responsible for the news of your recent illness. I'm sure it was his first thought, but it was not what he did."

"Why did he send for you?"

"Because I will defend you," Georgie said, "from anyone – your husband, from society, and even from my brother if his intentions are less than honorable. I will not stand to see you suffer."

"You have no reason to do such a thing."

"I have never needed a reason to help another woman in need," Georgie replied, "but I have always done it."

Whether it was Georgie's resolve, or underlying accusation, or the stress of the situation, she knew not, but something made Julia Wright, at that very moment, break down in tears and cry on her shoulder for a long time.

*******************************************

Hidden in the twisted paths that bordered the two estates, away from huntsmen and gardeners and spying servants, Julia's tale of woe began to unravel.

"Do not judge Albert so harshly," she whimpered, still wiping her eyes with the handkerchief Georgie offered. "He was so kind to take us in – my father and I. My father was too ill to work, and had to sell his business. There was some money left for me, but I would have been orphaned, and if Papa did not die, he knew I would spend into my own money to support him. When Albert Wright came along, he was so polite. He did not look down on our situation as if he was offering us a pittance."

"But he gained his estate by marrying you," Georgie said.

"It could have been anyone. If he took pity on me, he never showed it. When my father died, I was in jet for the full year, denying Albert one of his few rights as a husband. I had a roof over my head, an understanding husband, a welcoming community – I was not happy, because of my loss, but I was _content_." She sneezed. "I should be content, should I not? My lot is not such a sorry one. My husband has never been cruel without a good reason."

"Being that cruel is never reasonable," Georgie said, ignoring the irony of her speaking the words. Julia Wright was defenseless against anyone who attacked her, much less if it was her husband himself. "Some women are truly happy just to be content. That does not mean you have to be."

"May I speak cruelly for a moment of your brother?"

"Save me from the trouble of doing it."

This earned Georgie a little smile from Julia, who continued, "Had I not met Edmund – excuse me, Mr. Bingley – I would perhaps have not known the extent to which I am unhappy, and my husband, in term, unhappy. He is frustrated by the current circumstances of our union. Now it impedes everything – even ordinary conversation. I was so terrified and happy when you called, so that I could speak to someone. The servants are all his."

Caught in an unhappy marriage for reasons that could not be surpassed – not easily, if at all – Julia had taken a course she had not known at the time to be perfectly natural. The remaining question was whether Edmund was incidental. He at least felt differently, of this Georgie was sure – but her concern now was not her brother. "Has there been some reconciliation?"

"Some. Not in words, but in time. It heals all wounds, does it not?"

"But it does not fix the problem, should you never engage in something beyond your marriage again, and be the good wife you are so eager to be." She crossed her arms. "Just because I supported my brother in his divorce does not mean I do not consider marriage a sacred institution. That it also makes people miserable is not something I am able to reconcile. In fact, I refuse to reconcile."

"You are an idealist."

Perhaps she was. "When I think I can do anything, I will do it."

"What can you possibly do?"

"Well," she admitted, "this was a start."

*******************************************

Georgie was reluctant to push Julia any further. The matter was not pressing – not something to be done in a single morning – if Mrs. Wright was not in danger, which it appeared she was not. She seemed sincere about her husband's affections, limited as they may be, but her eyes always flashed a bit when Georgie mentioned Edmund, however much in passing. There was a connection there that made Georgie uncomfortable, though she pretended not to notice it for the same, and talked instead of her children and her childhood in Derbyshire, topics mundane enough to put her new friend at ease.

By the time they parted she was starving, and welcomed joining the luncheon with a passing explanation of her absence followed by a devouring of the cold meats in front of her. Edmund stared, but Geoffrey only gave her a sideways glance and looked to his own plate. To Edmund it probably seemed like the meal would go on forever, but she had her fill, then checked on the children, who were sleeping or reading, before officially refusing to give him a full report.

"She is a married woman," she told Edmund, as if he did not know already. "Her marriage is unhappy because her husband is impotent. Before the incident which caused you to summon me, he had never struck her, or been unkind."

"That doesn't excuse it."

"No, but it does explain it."

"Did she say anything about me?"

She rolled her eyes. "She was reluctant to assign you the blame you so richly deserve."

"Georgie – "

"And I have yet to determine if anything can be done in her benefit, and if you would even be involved." She was stern, because she had to be.

"I love her."

It was not what she wanted to hear, but he was not lying. "I can't tell her that. Not directly."

"If she asks – "

"Then I will."

Despite her intentional coldness, he grabbed her hand and shook it. "Thank you so much, Georgie. Thank you so much." He practically bowed his way out, to Georgie's disgust and Geoffrey's amusement.

"Stop laughing."

"I am not."

"You are trying to hold it back, and it is an admirable attempt to be sure."

"Have some sympathy for your long-suffering husband."

"And how are you the suffering one?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You were not here this morning, when Edmund was pretending to work by getting soused in the study."

"What?"

*******************************************

"She's gone," Edmund said, finishing off the rest of the glass as he stared out the window. "She's gone to see her, I assume."

Geoffrey just looked at the ever-reduced bottle on the counter that Edmund grabbed again to refill his glass.

"Have you ever been in love with someone so much that you wish it could go away? That you could have one second of peace, knowing full well that you cannot be with her?"

"Yes," Geoffrey answered. "I was eighteen, and it was your sister. Do you want the details?"

Edmund visibly gagged. "No." He resumed pacing. "How do I know this is not merely an infatuation?"

"Sometimes it is very hard to tell the difference," his brother-in-law said. "I would imagine however that usually people are not inclined to fight the courts, the church, and society as a whole for an infatuation."

"I've never felt this way about anyone," he said. "Not even my wife, G-d help her. And I don't even know this woman, Geoffrey. I barely know anything about her except her marital status. Even before you were engaged you shared with Georgie every secret – "

"I am hardly the shining example," Geoffrey replied, "as I knew her all my life. This is not usually the case."

"Even Charles, the G-dless sodomite – "

"Edmund!" Geoffrey frowned. "Insulting your brother isn't going to get you anywhere. If anything, this should bring you closer."

Edmund laughed a bit too loud. "How is that possible?"

"You both want something unattainable."

This brought Edmund to a halt. He slammed the glass on the table, spilling it on some his documents, and sunk in the chair. "Leave me be."

"Do you promise to sober up?"

"It is precisely my intention." He added, "If I can bring myself to do it."

*******************************************

"So you see," Geoffrey said later, with his wife, "it is a hopeless situation."

"Well," Georgie answered with a grin, "I wouldn't be entirely sure of that."

"You have a plan?"

"I cannot yet make out its source," she said, "but there is a light at the end of this tunnel."

... Next Chapter - Gawan


	19. Gawan

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note: **I'm back from camping and beating people up in a suit of medieval Japanese armor. If any of that is surprising to you, you haven't been paying very close attention to these maybe the camping thing. I hate camping. I stayed at a nearby hotel.**  
**

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 19 - Gawan

Charles Bingley III stood in an unfamiliar position – in the house of a woman he'd grown fond of, asking for her permission to write to her brother for permission to court her. Strangely, his insides were not churning as hard as he thought they would be. When Miss Emerson's face lit up, so did his, and there was a lightness of heart that he had not felt in a long time. Instead he was prepared for a wave of guilt at falsely exciting her hopes, and bringing her closer to the eventual discovery that the man pursuing her was on some level false in his intentions, but it came only later, when he returned to his home and was alone, and his mood less elevated. While still in her presence, his heart was beating too quickly to feel bad about what he was doing.

He _would_ tell her. Before a proposal, if there was one. He would only do that if he was sure of the match, if it was suitable, if he could bear it. He would not ask her into a union based on a lie unless she was in on it, and the extent to which he was lying, he was not positive. Upon his return to the Bingley house, he found a card from Paul and sent a footman to return it with a note scribbled on the back. Charles spared himself the agony that would come with the thought of letting go of Paul, but he could not bring himself to meet with him tonight or even tomorrow. It was too soon, too connected, almost too intertwined with the honest man he was trying to make of himself.

Eliza was not in town, so he had no consolation there. The Maddoxes were not in on that very crucial secret, so the fullest extent of his inner turmoil could not be expressed, and his desire to not be alone in his joy and sorrow went unattended. Instead he sat in the study and wrote a letter to his parents, long overdue, of the comings and goings of Town, then retired to the library with a book.

This would be his life. That route was still available, that of the solitary bachelor. He was reliant on invitations to make conversation with anyone. Inviting Paul, the person he wanted most to talk to (Miss Emerson was a close second), was impossible. Even Dr. Creswell, the unapologetic sodomite, had the good sense not to go to bed alone.

_I am damned either way_, he mused sadly, and climbed into his cold bed.

The next day he paid call on Frederick Maddox's house. The couple was actually not in Town, but Danny Maddox was. He was perhaps the only person Charles felt bad for, though he was sure Danny would not appreciate his sort of sympathy. Blind, disfigured, and the second son, Daniel Maddox Jr. did not have much to advance himself. Charles did admire how he took it in stride. Maybe Japan was therapeutic for him.

"I feel inclined to ask..."

"I wrote her brother for permission to court her," Charles said, though the subject was not previously mentioned. "I await his response."

"Surely he can have no objection."

Charles shrugged, then realized Danny wouldn't see it, and said, "Hopefully."

"You are a man in good social standing." Danny couldn't play cards, but there were certain tile-based games he could follow fairly well with his hands, and Charles made it a point to learn all of them. "You are being modest in your pursuit."

"I'm not sure yet," he said, and put a new tile down, which Danny felt. "I know some men declare themselves early, and see the courtship as a formality, but I am not so impulsive."

"I could say it is better that way, but I know many examples to the contrary," Danny said with a grin. "Frederick did go through a formal courtship, but you said it was for show."

"It was to satisfy her father," Charles said, having been in Italy with Frederick at the time. "And I suppose, to get to know her better, but looking back, I could see he had very clear intentions from the beginning, and only wholesome ones."

"If he hurt Lady Heather, he would have to answer to Georgie, so I imagine it could not have been anything less."

Charles chuckled at that. "This is true."

Danny sorted the tiles in his hand, and changed subjects. "I understand Geoffrey and Georgie are in Somerset with Edmund."

"Yes. He invited them or something."

"Is he not there on business?"

"I believe he is."

"And he has invited them," Danny said, "so the question remains as to what mysterious death we'll be hearing about."

"Danny! You are speaking of my sister."

"So quick to assume."

"You meant it all the same."

Danny, his head always a bit bowed, had a wicked grin. "I suppose I did."

*******************************************

"Look, Mama. Puppies," Alison pointed, even though it was rude to point, at the litter of puppies stuffed in a box as if they were the same as the other objects for sale in the store. At least they had a bed of straw beneath them for them to roll around in. "We should get Brian a puppy."

It was so sweet of her daughter to think first of her brother, and not of herself. "That is very kind of you, but he is not old enough to care for one. A good hound requires a lot of attention."

Alison frowned, uncertain of herself. "Did Papa own a hound?"

"He did. Sir Gawain. He died when you were young, before we went to Japan."

"He is in the grave behind the house?"

"Yes. You used to call him 'Gawan' and chase him around like Brian does to Mrs. Wilkinson's dog," Georgie said, and Alison's face went red. "But he was a very old dog. Your father got him when he was a boy of ten. He wanted one long before that, but I remember your Grandfather Darcy wouldn't let him until he was old enough to care for an animal himself." She looked over at the squealing puppies. "They are adorable."

"Mama..."

She rolled her eyes. "It is a responsibility."

"I know. I will care for it. I will walk it every day, I promise."

"When it is cold, you will not want to. And don't think you can pass this off to William. He is much younger and I will not have him scampering about, doing your chores."

"Mama, I promise."

Georgie sighed. "I will discuss it with your father. And our hosts, who will be put out."

"Thank you, Mama!" Her daughter hugged her right there, in the store, and Georgie was willing to call the discussion a success, however foreboding the outcome.

*******************************************

"A puppy? Where did this come from?"

Georgie sat at her chair as the maid straightened her turban for her. It was a ball, so everything had to be _just so_. "We saw a litter of puppies and they were cute. You know how children are."

"And she's old enough not to immediately forget about it."

"Precisely." She dismissed the maid, and Geoffrey approached from behind, pulling on his tie, which in his opinion was always tied too tight. "William and Brian would have responsibilities, when they are older."

"It could be a family dog, depending on the breed, and how she takes to him. Her. Do you get a girl dog for a girl?"

"You get one of those tiny ones that you hold in hand, like Mrs. Wilkinson. Can't do much with it, but it makes a good companion."

"For sitting around," Geoffrey said, "which Alison does enough of as it is. A dog will give her a suitable excuse to run around for a bit longer." He straightened the feather attached to the turban for her. "If she still pushes the issue when we leave – if we ever do escape this mess – then I will probably give in. But not a moment before."

She rose, partially to leave for the ball, and partially to kiss him. "You are a good father."

"I will settle for _sensible_, if it involves an animal in our house."

*******************************************

The ball, to which an invitation to the Darcys and Mr. Bingley was happily extended along with their hosts, was hosted by one of Mr. Bingley's business contacts, whose daughter was coming out at the age of eighteen. The room was very done up for the occasion, and though it could not match a formal ball at Pemberley (such a rare occurrence anyway), it was clear the father was intent to elevate and promote his daughter.

The Darcys were the objects of some interest because they were guests and therefore largely unknown, but as they were married and with no children of marriageable age, they could only be _so_ interesting. Both of them were reminded of the relief of no longer having to dance with strangers, and only danced one dance with each other. Under normal circumstances her brother would have been sought out, but by now all of Somerset knew his past and his sunken fortune, and however willing the men were to do business with him, it would not involve their daughters. He skulked about with a glass of wine before disappearing. He was not present for the tardy arrival of the Wrights, who did not dance. They did not look happy, but nor did they look to be in a quarrel.

It was when the third set began, the one the Darcys decided not to dance, that they noticed Mrs. Wright was missing from the floor, and her husband was embroiled in a conversation with some of the older gentlemen. Edmund was similarly absconded, and the Darcys decided perhaps it was time to make a quick tour of their host's grand estate.

They did stumble upon the disaster they were expecting, but Geoffrey grabbed his wife's arm and held her back, practically ducking behind the very well-trimmed hedges. Edmund and Mrs. Wright were not in a compromising position, if one did not consider merely being alone compromising. They were outside, by a well-lit fountain, standing next to each other and speaking quietly.

"It's bright enough," Geoffrey said. "Let me see what they're saying before we barge in."

"If they're caught – "

"They're talking. They've gone for a breath of fresh air for all anyone knows. Let me concentrate."

She eventually agreed. Fortunately they were positioned enough so that Geoffrey had a fairly clear view of both of them, at least to the side.

*******************************************

"I did not mean to hunt you down this way," Edmund said, tugging at the end of his vest nervously because he did not know what to do with his hands.

"You were not inside when I arrived."

"I mean, I came to the ball."

"You were not invited?"

"I was." He looked down. "But I would not have gone ... otherwise. No one is interested in me and I am interested in no other person. I would have made excuses."

"But you did not."

"No," he said. "I did not."

She looked down, as if trying to meet him, and an uncomfortable silence passed.

"I'm sorry," he rushed, now that he had the courage so carefully built up. "There is no way I can express how ... sorry I am. About everything. What happened to you ... well, because of me."

Her own voice, now, was not so easy, and more laden. "Are you sorry to have met me?"

Edmund swallowed. "I should lie, and say yes, it never should have happened, we should not have met that way. But I would be lying." He added, finally, "How are you?"

"Better now," Julia replied, though it was unclear whether she meant in general or at that moment. "I've wanted to speak to you – at first I didn't, not after the fight with Albert. But when your sister appeared – "

"She won't let me near you."

She nodded. "She has good intentions."

"But it's frustrating."

"I know."

There was a motion between them, with both rejecting their instincts to embrace, and instead to separate a bit further instead.

"I should try to set things right with my husband," she said. "I have tried."

Edmund did not bother to hide his anguish; it would have been impossible.

"I am married to him, Edmund."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"There was a time I thought I loved him. It ended long before you came along – do not have that on your conscience – but the extent of my loneliness, I did not know before. Just seeing you is..." She looked away from him. He offered his hand, not outstretched as if to shake, but just presented as an idea, and she took it, their fingers intertwined even though they were both wearing gloves.

"If you want me to go away forever, I will," he said. "I will conclude my business without any social engagements and leave this place forever."

"You don't want to."

"I will do whatever is required for your happiness." The tone of his voice and his expression indicated that he meant it.

She shivered. "I do not know what is required for my happiness, short of being with you."

Their very clear movement toward a kiss was halted when Georgiana unceremoniously pushed over a pot, causing a loud enough crash to startle them both. They saw no one, but Mrs. Wright curtseyed quickly and hurried before he could even bow. As Georgie and Geoffrey emerged, he said, "Oh, thank G-d."

"Yes, you were lucky." Georgie's voice was not forgiving. "Your reputation would be ruined if you were discovered, but her life would be ruined."

"Can you tell me it is not already?"

Geoffrey decided to play peacemaker. "We are trying to control the damage."

Edmund hung his head, but was not entirely apologetic. "I had to see her. Did you hear it all?"

"I could see you talking," Geoffrey said. "It was enough."

"I tried to make amends."

"Edmund, we must return to the ball to be seated for dinner," Georgie interrupted. "Amends cannot be made this evening, and you have been lucky yet again. Don't press your luck a third time."

"Yes, _Mother_," he said indignantly, and stormed off.

Geoffrey grabbed Georgie's arm yet again, to prevent her from trying to continue the conversation. "Let him be. We have learned something important, aside from the fact that I am an amusingly poor mimic of a woman's voice." Which earned him a smile, diffusing some of her anger. As he read their lips, he had spoken the whole conversation to Georgie, with some attempt to differentiate between them. "If there was any doubt of real affection between them, I think it can safely be dismissed."

*******************************************

There were no further developments at the ball, where the food was at least quite good, and promptly upon returning, Edmund took in half a bottle of brandy and disappeared into his chambers. Georgiana was distracted anyway; Nurse approached her with a fussy Brian, who woke and would not return to sleep without his mother, for whom he wailed incessantly.

"The cause is lost for the evening," Geoffrey said, kissing his wife goodnight as she turned to divert her energies to their son now, who wanted to be held for a bit longer before he would return to his bed. When he settled down, which with her expertise was quickly, she found her husband already in bed and nearly asleep.

He barely had the energy to put an arm around her and whisper in her ear. "You are a good mother."

"But a bad marriage counselor."

"If I must choose, I will take the one over the other any day."

*******************************************

For the first time in two days, Georgie encountered Julia Wright on her morning walk.

"My husband does not know I'm here," she said, as if it was a crime. "He is hung over. He doesn't normally drink so heavily, but it was a ball."

"My husband was similarly quick to bed," Georgie said, and they walked down the path that would be on the Wright land, where Julia felt more comfortable.

"You heard us last night, didn't you?"

"Not precisely. My husband is an excellent reader of lips."

Julia regarded her queerly for a moment before continuing. "It was a terrible risk, but I was desperate."

"I know." It was plain as day.

"Mrs. Darcy, I have not slept in my husband's bed – even in the same room – in nearly a year. And not because I have not tried. I have thought on it, and I am not so sure anymore that the rest of the comforts this life with him can offer me are satisfactory."

"Love, too, can be fleeting," Georgie said. "Especially the physical element. A home is forever."

"I want to give my husband another chance, but it has been so long since I have approached him, and I am afraid." She stopped, and faced Georgie. "I don't want to be hurt again."

Georgie stopped herself from suggesting that she hit back. This was Julia Wright, and it was not instinctual, and would probably be ineffective. "If he strikes you again, and you wish to run, I will protect you."

"He will suspect – "

She shook her head. "This is not about Edmund. I said I would protect you, and if he comes after you still, and is so terrible a man, I will hit him myself."

The utter severity of her voice left no room for doubt, but Julia had to say it all the same, "You are not afraid of his reaction?"

"The people I hit," she replied in a perfectly serious but even voice, "have a tendency not to get back up so quickly."

... Next Chapter - Halted Relationships


	20. Halted Relationships

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 20 - Halted Relationships

Something about speaking to Mrs. Darcy always invigorated Julia Wright. Between seeing her and seeing Edmund, all in the past day, she needed only a few hours to work up the courage to speak to her husband. Most likely it would end badly, but it would be a conversation.

Since their last fight, Albert Wright took his meals in the study, claiming business concerns she knew he did not have. He occasionally made an exception for dinner, which was always an awkward, tense affair they were both eager to be free of. She was content to wait until after he'd eaten alone, and was full and possibly drinking, but he did not emerge from his study. Her intentions to catch him on the way to bed thwarted, she entered his holy place, where she had so rarely been, and only when called. "Albert."

He looked up, rather surprised, but not immediately incensed. "Julia. Did I summon you?"

"You did not." She shut the door behind her. "It is so hard to speak to you."

He put down his papers, and picked up his brandy. "I will not deny it. The reasons behind it need not be discussed. It will pass."

"It will not!" she shouted. She hadn't been intending to shout, and the shock on his face was evident. She lowered her voice. "Albert, I am unhappy."

He sighed, this road well-trodden, though not so much outright. "You cannot deny that I have done everything in my abilities to make you happy."

This was what she had worked for, what Mrs. Darcy had given her courage for. "You do not have some abilities."

Albert did not appear relenting on this. Nor did he give any display of sympathy. "I have considered the matter, and if you wish a child, you may take in a ward, of suitable birth – "

"I do not want a child!" But she was getting ahead herself. "I'm sorry – it is true. But I do not want a ward. I want a child – with you."

"And I very much want sons," he said, in more of a grumble. "So we are in agreement. As to my failing in this regard, I have apologized before and I will not continue to do so. We must_ make do_, Mrs. Wright. If you want a ward, you may have one. I reserve only the right to not pretend the child is my own. I will not give any pretense of that."

"This marriage is a pretense!" She was shouting again; she had to stop shouting. The servants would hear. "Our wedding night is not even complete."

He colored, and it was hard to tell from anger or embarrassment. "I am only a man. Half of one, maybe, from a certain perspective, but that does not invalidate all that I have given you to compensate – "

"Some things cannot be compensated for."

Now, for sure, he was angry. Not frothing – only once had she seen him literally swinging. His anger was a quiet sort, but no less potent and real. "So you have discovered. Who was he?"

"Does it matter?" Of course it did, in the end, but she could ignore it for the moment. "Does it surprise you that I would eventually fall into someone's arms, when you refuse me even a warm bed?"

Albert's expression was perplexed. "Where is this coming from? This is not the Julia I know. Is this your lover speaking?"

"I have not seen him," she lied. "And it is not his words I speak." This, at least, was not a lie. "They are my own. I know very well I am at fault for preserving the sanctity of this marriage. You have made that more than clear. I can now only question how it is a marriage in the first place."

He rose, and she instinctively backed away. He almost always sat, like a king on his throne, through the entirety of their conversations. "You are my wife, Julia, and I feel obligated to remind you how close you come to being unreasonable, if you are not there already. May I remind you what I've done for you? How I took you in when you could not pay for your father's care without ruining yourself? How you would be a governess now if it were not for this?"

"And you would be without a grand estate."

This caused only a brief halt in his speech before he began again. "I permitted you to wear jet for your father when the ink on our license was practically not yet dry. You sat in mourning while whatever limited enthusiasm I had to try again waned. My life previous to this union had been similarly frustrated by humiliating failures, and now I was to be stymied again by my own wife, and still I held my tongue because you loved your father, even at night when you were not required to act in constant sorrow. I've provided for you, given in to your every request to the full extent that I am capable, given you a roof over your head, brought you into my society without a hint of my own turmoil, allowed you to walk about outside without a guardian – and this is how you repay me? How many gentlewomen turned governesses would beg for your position? Hundreds? Thousands?"

She was silent. She gave herself credit for not running.

"You say you are not happy. Perhaps this lover, whom you claim to have seen only once, but long enough to leave his mark, has incited some unhealthy, hussy wiles – "

"I am not a hussy!"

"You are a whore then."

"I took nothing from him."

"The payment was satisfaction perhaps – less visible than coin, except on your face when you speak of him. Perhaps if I knew and spoke his name your face would light up like the sun. Do you know how that pains me? To know you think better of some lesser man than me, your own husband, your provider?"

She bit her tongue to stifle her cry, and it worked.

"There are many women who have incompetent or uninterested husbands, or ones who simply find them unattractive – which I do not – and take mistresses – which I have not. There are many men who have barren wives and suffer the absence of children they so much desire. These are the facts of our lives, not the stuff of those women's novels you've been reading – and only because you asked for more literature and I provided you with your every want and desire if I possibly could. Can you deny that?"

"I cannot deny it." She was losing. She could not bear to lose.

"The Wilkinsons have a very happy marriage without children."

"They respect each other. They enjoy each other's company. They are companions and it brings them joy." She raised her eyes to face him. "I cannot say the same of us. Our marriage is not a happy one. Can you deny _that?_"

"I do not have unreasonable expectations – "

"Has the estate made you happy? You've gained a building in exchange for the company of a woman you cannot love, and who has tried to love you and now is given no reason to."

He was livid. "I have tried – "

"You have failed." It occurred to her now, so obvious where it hadn't been before, so she said it. "You are as unhappy as I am."

"I am willing to work with what I have!"

"You are not. You hide in your study and drink. No doubt you will become an alcoholic and I will find other distractions, and it will grow to the point where we cannot stand the sight of each other, as we can hardly do it now. Albert, you are deluding yourself."

"And you are lost in a fantasy."

"I want so badly to have some hope for the future. Is that so wrong?" She reached out, and touched his cheek, and he did not shy away or knock her hand. "I want to love you. I want to be your wife in the fullest sense of the word, not just in name and on paper."

He looked down, rejecting her gaze, and for a moment her heart went out to him. He _had_ tried very hard to give her the life she wanted. She could not deny him that. Was it his fault he had failed, or her own?

Albert took a moment before speaking in a careful tone, "I have given you all I can, and for a time, you did as well. Neither of us will deny that. As to what I cannot change, you cannot ask it of me. If you wish to be happy, be grateful for what you already have, which is so much more than so many of your sex."

"Albert."

Now he backed away. "Do not ask more of me."

"I just want – "

"And do not try my patience. I would say I mean to be serious, but we know each other, and you know therefore that I am always serious." He then took his seat at his desk very formally, in a clear and abrupt dismissal.

Julia did as she was essentially told, which was to flee in turmoil to her own room. She shooed away her lady-maid and sat down in front of the mirror to pull down her hair herself, sometimes tugging out the ribbons so hard in anger that she took some stands of her hair with it, but the pain could not be worse than the pain in her chest. She offered him her heart, but like his other failures of the most acute kind, he could not return the sentiment.

*******************************************

Charles Bingley III was late in returning from dinner at the Franklins. They had George and Mrs. Wickham over, and with them came Emma Wickham, whom Charles held for a great deal of time when he was supposed to be drinking port with the men. Like her uncle Matthew Turner, she had brown hair, which had not darkened with time, and her eyes were now brown like her mother's. She was a very sweet child, and cried not once in his presence, and gave him a toothless smile, though he could see the beginnings of her baby teeth when she opened her mouth wide enough, usually to stuff something in there. She'd ruined his tie before the Nurse stopped her, but he laughed it off and dismissed all concerns.

When he arrived at the Bingley house, the footman was waiting for him. "A message for you, sir."

Charles recognized the card immediately, and nearly tore it open. Miss Emerson extended an invitation to her house, to be replied to in the form of his presence as immediately as he could. Highly improper, but maybe Mr. Emerson was in town.

His hat was only off for a moment before he retrieved it. "Thank you. I will return later." She lived not far – no one fashionable in London did – and it was faster to walk with all of the traffic of carriages returning from or going to an evening's entertainment. It was only on the way there, with the stuffy and dirty London air in his lungs, did he consider that had Mr. Emerson come to Town, he would have written him and not his sister, surely? He arrived on her doorstep mostly perplexed. He had never been inside before, but he was immediately ushered in, and into the drawing room as soon as his soot-covered coat could be removed.

Miss Emerson stood by the unlit fireplace, a letter in her hands. She had previously been sitting, but when he entered she was standing, very much waiting for him. He could not read her expression, which he immediately took to be a bad sign as he bowed. "Miss Emerson."

She curtseyed, but did not say anything. Awkwardly, he waited, then said, "So he refused."

She had been crying for some time. The servants brought in better light by candle before disappearing during their silence before disappearing. Though she was composed, her eyes were still red. "Please sit, Mr. Bingley."

"Only if you do the same."

She obliged him. "Forgive the improper nature of the request for you to come, but my family is accustomed to secrecy." Her grip on the letter nearly tore it. The writing was tiny and precise, and filled up both sides, so it was not a simple answer. "I will ask you for a promise of secrecy on what I am about to say, but knowing the nature of what it is, I am sure you will agree."

He swallowed. "Of course, Miss Emerson."

She took a tip of wine and set it back down. Nothing about her, despite the wine, was relaxed. "My brother knows you. He remembers you – from a party a year ago, at a gentleman's house. The name was – " She had to look at the letter, " – Stephen. My brother did not give a last name."

Whatever was left to be light in his heart sunk like a stone.

"He says you may not remember him – or if you did, you said nothing when he applied for the living and he is most grateful. He only spoke to you once, in passing, and he admits he was quite drunk and you were probably the same. He regrets that he was also not ... suitably attired."

He could not look at her. He put a hand over his eyes.

"You do not remember him?"

"No." He did not remember him, though he did remember the party. Stephen was a pleasant enough fellow, though their own relationship was not long enough to be called that, but earned him an invitation to one of Stephen's infamous holiday celebrations, before they all retreated back to their families and their lives of lies. It was a final night of freedom before returning to their families for the holidays and the New Year, and the tragedies it would surely bring on at least a few attendees, but hopefully not all. "I do not remember him, but I will not say I was not there."

She folded the letter to protect it from her tears, and set it on the table. "I have only my brother in this life, since our father's death. His attempts to keep his nature from me were short-lived. We grew up together and we were close, as you seem to be with your sister Elizabeth, as you speak so fondly of her. Thomas wants to be a good man. He wants to be an honest man, a man of G-d. He is not lying in that regard, but he is not public with his failings. He does not want to be a sodomite. He calls it a cross he must bear, which does not surprise me, as he has always been very religious. I think, these parties aside, he will be a good Vicar of Lambton if you let him be."

"I will keep your brother's secret," he said, "and I do not for a moment doubt his good intentions, though I can see why he would doubt mine."

She was not cruel – he could not imagine her ever being cruel – but she softened her hard tone to be stunned. "You do not even dispute the worst sort of slander on your name."

"I cannot dispute it and I will not dispute it. Not to you, anyway." He removed his hand, and was tempted to reach for the wine, but restrained himself. "I was planning to tell you."

"When? When I was so thoroughly in love with you that I could not then refuse you?"

"No. I mean – it would have been sooner. I didn't know when. I don't know when it ought to be done." He looked at her at last. "I do not know what I am doing. I lack instruction on the proper way."

"But you do it because you must be married."

"I do it because I _want_ to be married," he said. "Because I want a family and children. Because I have lived a dishonorable life and whatever happiness it has brought me has been fleeting." He knew he could not salvage this, but he would not break her heart, or at least not leave it in any more pieces than it already was. "I did not select you from a list of women most suitable to my own motives. I found you, I danced with you, I enjoyed your company. I tore myself to shreds over whether to court you, only to disappoint you if I could not bring myself to throw away what is so intrinsically part of my nature. I thought ... maybe it would work. Maybe we would be happy together." He did not wipe his eyes, not yet.

Miss Emerson was in a similar condition. "I have thought on it, Mr. Bingley, and despite my brother's advice to flee you at all costs, I will continue this charade, if you keep my brother's secret."

"This is not a charade to me."

"How could it be otherwise?"

"Miss Emerson – Megan – I am not without feelings for you. I have not lied in that regard. I would never engage in a charade that involves a woman's heart." He added, despite the irony, "It's not the behavior of a gentleman."

To say this surprised her was putting it mildly. "Mr. Bingley." She trailed off. She did not have words, at first. "Can you say to me, now, that as you are courting me, you have no one else in your life, to whom your heart belongs?"

Whatever color was left in him probably departed. He looked away again. "I cannot."

"Even now – "

" – I am not settled, no. That is why this is a courtship, not an engagement. I am trying to settle my affairs."

"Settle your affairs!" She rose. He was surprised she hadn't done it earlier. "Affairs indeed! I will spare you the sermonizing over your selection in fairness to my brother, but to love someone and court another – is that the life you are freeing yourself from?"

"I am trying." He corrected. "I was trying." He stood, and took her hand, patting it with the other. "You are a wonderful woman, Megan. You deserve better than me." Charles squeezed her hand before releasing it. "I am so very sorry for the pain I have caused you, that was so callously inflicted despite my best attempts to do otherwise. I am not fit for anyone, but especially not you. Please hear my apologies, and perhaps someday be good enough to accept them." He bowed. "And fear not for your brother, as we are both duty-bound to the same secret." He turned. "Good night."

"Mr. Bingley – "

He halted. "Yes?"

She retracted her hand. "Just go. And I'm sorry, too."

She did not give a reason why. The situation did not require that of her. It had already required too much. But he did allow himself to hear her words, and be comforted by them, but only several hours and two bottles of brandy later, when he embraced the darkness that welcomed him, freeing him for a time from the harsh light he would face at dawn.

... Next Chapter - (No title yet)


	21. The Fabric Store

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note:** I want you all to know that Brandy's been working really hard as a beta for these stories, especially working around my schedule, and if you have time, please leave **a message thanking Brandy** for all her hard work. Thanks.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 21 - The Fabric Store

It rained in the early morning, so the ground was still wet when Georgiana set out. She wasn't entirely sure she would encounter Mrs. Wright, but she wanted the fresh air after a stuffy night in a ballroom. Her peace and quiet did not last long. She steadied herself to approach the wet, shivering Mrs. Wright.

"You're being followed," was the first thing out of Georgie's mouth.

"How do you know?"

"I saw him. I think he's a gardener for you. Don't turn around."

"Can he hear us?"

"Probably not." Nonetheless she closed in, so they could speak quietly. She knew he was keeping his distance. "Let us walk."

"Will we lose him?"

"No. That would make it obvious that we're trying to. I must be above suspicion, though I am obviously not." She offered her own shawl, but Julia refused. "What happened?"

"We fought – for all the reasons we should have fought. Not physically." She wiped her eyes. "He is right. He has given me everything and I have rewarded him with betrayal. He has provided for me, and he provided for my father, and he has been kind in every way he is capable of being so. I cannot ask for more of him, and yet I came out here, honestly, truly, because I wanted to see Edmund. I knew you would say no, but I wanted to ask."

"If it does not pain you too greatly, what did you say to him?"

"He was patient with me until I said our marriage wasn't real –that it was never made real. That was too much for him. Please do not be angry with him. He does not deserve it. He did not strike me, Mrs. Darcy."

Apparently, he did not have to. "The results were similar nonetheless."

"I am not in physical danger." She repeated, "He is a good man."

"You are trying to convince yourself of that. It seems as though he is a decent man, and no doubt he has provided for you, and been kind, and been understanding. The _extent_ to which he has done so is obviously lacking."

"Every man has his deficiencies. I am asking too much."

Georgie took Julia's hands in hers and looked her in the eyes. "What do you want?"

"To see Edmund."

To arrange it would be difficult. To forward the affair would likely be devastating for everyone involved. To deny a crying woman her one request was beyond Georgie's abilities. "Let me see what I can do."

*******************************************

Edmund was disturbingly elated at the news. "When can I see her?"

"Edmund, be realistic. Her husband has her followed. He's probably already suspicious of me. Do you want to lose everything by being exposed?"

"If I have to."

Georgie turned to her husband, who only shrugged.

"And what about the Wilkinsons? We'll be tossed out. You'll have to explain it to Papa."

"So I will. I've been through worse." He would not relent. "If it can be done in secrecy, yes. If not, I will do it anyway."

"You will be talking. _Only_."

"I know." He didn't seem thrilled, but he accepted the idea. "I cannot deny her anything, Georgie. Can you?"

She frowned. Again, she could not.

*******************************************

The meeting could not be so easily arranged. Julia had only one confidant in her home, and it was a cook. Her husband was suspicious of her comings and goings – and rightly so. And they could not simply invite the Wrights to Cheswick without tipping off the Wilkinsons. Georgie went back and forth with ideas for a day before Geoffrey said, "Does that town have a fabric store?"

"Be serious."

"I am being serious." He raised an eyebrow. "Mostly, anyway."

"Why didn't I think of a shopping trip?"

"Because you hate them."

"It depends on the company."

But it was a very good idea. The next day, Georgiana Darcy and Julia Wright went shopping. They were women and they did not have to give a reason. Julia was still distraught, though less openly so. "My husband has not spoken to me since our argument. Perhaps he is cooling off."

"Julia, it is not my intention to ruin your marriage. By all means, if it is your wish, return to him."

But Julia was firm. "It is not my wish."

"Why do you want to see my brother?"

"Because I have betrayed my husband for someone else, and I ought to at least know who he is." That was the reason she gave, anyway.

Edmund had his own escort – two of them. Geoffrey and Alison accompanied him, which made him silent on the real reason they were going, so Geoffrey did not have to either console or discourage him the whole way. Instead they talked of dogs, and Edmund's only contribution was that he preferred monkeys much more.

Georgie and Julia went through several shops to lose their tail, one of the footmen in different clothing, before reaching a bookstore. Alison ran in to tell them there was a room in the back. She didn't know why she was doing it, but she knew she was being sneaky and she appeared thrilled. The shopkeeper was asleep at the counter, still wearing his spectacles.

"Don't _do_ anything," Georgie said, the meaning clear. "Or this will not happen again."

"Thank you, Mrs. Darcy."

"I'll be right outside. I will hear you."

"I know." With that, she stepped into the back room, and Georgie did not follow, and returned to appearing to browse the stacks.

*******************************************

Edmund nearly jumped at the sight of her. "Julia."

"Edmund!"

Geoffrey had said no touching, but when she leapt into his arms, he did not push her away. He leaned against the back wall and held her, and words were not needed so urgently. There was nothing in the world he needed at that moment, except for the moment not to end.

"Why do I not feel so terribly guilty?" Julia said, more of a mumble against his shoulder. "Am I a bad wife?"

"I cannot assign you a label. Certainly not one with the word _bad_ in it," he said. She had such lovely curls, but he resisted the urge to take them in his hands and feel them between his fingers.

"I don't even know you."

He grinned. "What do you want to know about me?"

"Everything."

Her hands were gloved. His were not, and he settled for the feel of silk against his skin as he held her hand. "My name is Edmund Bingley. I was named after my grandfather, my mother's father. I have three siblings – Georgiana is the oldest, and then Charles and Eliza are twins."

"Charles is the one to inherit?"

"Yes. I am the baby of the family."

"You must be terribly jealous of him."

"So everyone assumes, but I would not trade places with him. I do not covet his position for ... so many reasons," he said. "When I graduated Oxford, my father gave me money to start my own life, and I invested it. I was doing quite well until the divorce."

"You do not have to talk about it."

He wanted to talk about it. For the first time in his life, he desperately wanted to tell someone every detail, and only one person. Fortunately she was in front of him. "She was with child by my manservant. She demanded a divorce and I paid for it, and I returned her dowry, so she would have something."

"Why in the world would you do that?"

"It was outrageous, but she demanded it, and I could not say no. I still loved her."

"She betrayed you," Julia said.

"She did, but only because she found me lacking. I was too young and too absorbed in my work. I loved her but did not show it. I do believe I never understood the depth of my love until she was gone, and I might never otherwise have learned. I thought life was just supposed to be a certain way – you go to University, you build a life for yourself, you get married, you settle. She was another thing that made my life a complete picture, but it was nothing more than a picture."

"She did not appreciate you."

"I did not appreciate her, so she found someone who did. Out of desperation, I suppose. I will never truly understand it. She's gone now, to France with her lover and her child. They are married, I believe. Someone told me. To see my reaction, no doubt. Like a zoo animal being taunted through the bars of the cage."

"You withstood it," she said, playing with hands, and her bracelet. "You withstood everything for a woman who didn't love you."

"Maybe she did, sometime long ago." He looked down. "Your father gave you that bracelet, did he not?"

Her hand moved away from it as if she was embarrassed. "How did you know?"

"Because your hands always go to it when you're nervous. It is an object of affection, and you've only spoken of one person with whom you hold so great an affection."

"That is not true. There is someone else." She grinned. "But it is true – about the bracelet. You are very clever. It was my mother's. I do not remember her – she died when I was very young, giving birth to a son, who was stillborn. When I was old and my wrists were big enough, my father gave it to me. In fact, it was my coming out present, aside from the gowns and the ball, and the only one I really loved." She added, "My husband has given me many beautiful pieces of jewelry, all without being asked. And I am sure he did it with affection."

"That was one of the things I said to my wife, the night she threw me out of my own house – that I provided for her. More than was necessary. Out of love." He shook his head. "I should not compare."

"We should not even be speaking."

He chuckled. "This is true."

"Your sister has been very kind to me."

"She has been less kind to me, but it is because I deserve it." He could only laugh about it – in Julia's presence, which made everything seem positive. "If something needs solving, you write Georgie."

"She is a puzzle."

"She went to Japan – Geoffrey, who is also our cousin, took her and Alison there. She wanted to go and learn how to fight from the Japanese. No one really knows why, but she came home and has been a very happy woman and mother ever since. So, by comparison, I am the most boring man in England."

She giggled. "You are not!"

"Shall I regale you with stories of Georgie's adventures instead of the technicalities of my divorce? I will do whatever makes you happy."

She kissed him. He should have stopped her, but he didn't. They did at least stop at one kiss. "You have already made me happy."

There was a knock on the door. Either Georgie knew what they were up to or their time was up. "Damn!" Edmund didn't apologize for the profanity. "I hope to see you soon. Goodbye, Julia."

"Goodbye, Edmund."

He bowed, and stepped backwards out the door into the alley behind the store. Julia went the other way, and opened the door back into the main shop, where Georgiana was leaning against the bookshelf.

"The owner's waking up," Georgie said, nodding to the man behind the counter. "And it's been too long."

"I know. Thank you."

"We will have to get a drink," Georgie said, "so you can explain to your husband why your cheeks are so rosy."

Which, of course, only made it worse.

*******************************************

With Edmund gone, Geoffrey was left with his daughter, now returned to him. She wanted to see the puppies again, and dragged him to the store – though to be fair, he let himself be dragged. "Papa, look! They're so cute. And they let you hold them."

"It is a sales technique," he said as they entered the general store, and she ran to the box of puppies. "When my father decided I was old enough for a dog, he took me to a breeder and selected the best of the breed."

"How do you know he's the best? Because the breeder says so?"

"Because – well, it would require me explaining what breeding is. Which is complicated." And, to be honest, he did not have an answer for her. Gawain was of the best pedigree, and he was swift and smart and well-behaved, but would he have been all of those things without the same parentage and the right tutor?

His daughter only had to glance at the shopkeeper, who nodded, and she picked up one of the dogs. "Look at this one. He's so small!"

"He will not be so small forever," he said, recognizing the breed. "He will soon be quite large. There are other kinds of dogs that don't grow very big. Mrs. Wilkinson has a dog that will not grow much more than his current size, but these are hounds."

"They're always crying," Alison said, and it was true. The dogs constantly mewed, a bit like cats, as they rolled around in their little crate. "Do they miss their mother?"

"Perhaps."

"Papa, are dogs smart?"

"They can be very smart."

"As smart as us?"

"No, not that smart. There is no creature on earth as smart as a person, even a foolish person. Though there are some, I think, that are more noble than people."

Alison frowned, though not all that much, because she held a puppy against her chest. "I don't understand."

"Animals cannot tell right from wrong. They only know what causes them pain and what causes them happiness. If you teach them to do the right thing because they will get a reward, and not be punished, they will always do it."

"Monkey doesn't always do what Grandpapa Bingley says. I don't think he _ever_ does."

"Monkey is different." Geoffrey could not help but be amused. "Monkeys ... they are very hard to train. Very stubborn. Dogs are loyal and will listen to you if you teach them when they are young."

"We should train an animal, when he is very young, and then have him be king. Then he will be a perfect king and never be wrong and we will all listen to him."

He laughed. "I would have trouble taking orders from a dog, even if he was sitting on the king's throne and wearing a crown." He took the puppy away from her, because he knew it was the only way she would relinquish it. "You mustn't scare him."

"I wasn't being scary."

"He doesn't know you. How would you feel if a person many times your size came to you and picked you up for no reason? You are fortunate that dogs are very brave." He put the puppy back in the crate, admitting that it was indeed cute.

"I'm can be brave!"

"I'm sure you can," Geoffrey said, putting a hand on her head, "but I would prefer you not to try to prove it, because I have no doubt you would do something that would terrify me."

*******************************************

When Geoffrey and Alison were finally done going through all the shops (which ended with Geoffrey buying her six different things, all small and two of them for her brothers, but nonetheless adding up to a larger number), they returned by gig to Cheswick. He did not let her hold the reins, but he did let her hold his hands as he held the reins, which gave her something to be proud of when she greeted her mother, already returned. "Mama, Mama! I drove the gig!"

"Did you now?" Georgie looked at Geoffrey skeptically, and he just smiled.

"Papa had his hands on but I was driving almost the whole way! And I have candy!"

"So you do."

"I may have bought some candy," Geoffrey said.

Georgie kissed her daughter on the cheek. "Now go wash up for dinner." As Alison skipped off, Georgie scowled at her husband, though not too badly. "You're a pushover."

"I am. Where is the man of the hour?"

"He came home just a few moments ago – long after we'd returned. I only worry the Wilkinsons will be suspicious of his sudden enthusiasm."

"If that is your only worry, then we are making progress."

*******************************************

Later that evening, as the men retreated for brandy, Georgie sat down for her usual round of cards with Mrs. Wilkinson, who for her age was a very adept player. The children were already in bed, after filling themselves with sugar, then running wild for several hours, only to fall into their beds from exhaustion.

"I don't know what your husband bought them, but it was enough," Mrs. Wilkinson said, with no disapproval in her voice. "My father always told me to stay away from sugar, but it's so accepted these days, even for small children."

"I'm satisfied they did not return with one of the puppies from the store that Alison will not cease mentioning."

"She is such a sweet girl."

"Thank you."

Mrs. Wilkinson put another card down. "And how is Mrs. Wright?"

"Well. More interested in the new fabrics than I was."

"It's so good of you to get her out of that house," her host said, "though, not always for the right reasons."

Georgiana looked down at her cards.

"I hoped at first they would improve when they had a child," Mrs. Wilkinson said. "It would make both of them so happy. They so clearly wanted one. No gentleman, no matter how wild his background, cannot resist the honor of having an heir, especially a man like Mr. Wright, with his young, beautiful wife and lovely estate. I felt sympathy for the man when one of his college friends came by, and told us the truth of it, that Mr. Wright would probably never have anything to do with Mrs. Wright conceiving. But I am a woman, and we will defend our sex, so I principally thought of _Mrs._ Wright."

"Of course," Georgie mumbled.

"So we hoped they would, as we did as we conceived no children, come to terms with their lot and make each other happy in companionship, but Mr. Wright is not that sort of man. He has never made her happy." She put another card down to counter Georgiana's move, half-hearted as it had been. "They're so isolated that I thought for sure it would be one of the servants."

Georgiana could now no longer focus on her cards, and put down whatever looked best in her hand without real attention to the game, and said nothing.

"Some people – perhaps most people, because this world can be very cruel – must sacrifice and struggle to be happy. And to find this happiness rules must be bent or even broken, and deals are made. This is a reality even an old woman like me has come to terms with, when I was done crying for all of my lost children and Michael was done looking for an heir."

"Mrs. Wilkinson – "

"For my own safety, when this eventually goes terribly, I will continue to play the doddering old fool, as will my husband, oblivious to the mischief of the young, even if we remember when we were young and made a bit of mischief ourselves. This is on the condition that you know in your heart what you are doing is right."

"I cannot define it as right or wrong," Georgie replied. "Not in the conventional way. I can only do what I came here to do, and that is defend Julia from all comers who seek her ill."

"Well, thank G-d for that. The poor girl needs some defense." She smiled. "Shall we play another hand?"

Georgie agreed.

... Next Chapter - First Blood


	22. First Blood

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note:** I want you all to know that Brandy's been working really hard as a beta for these stories, especially working around my schedule, and if you have time, please leave **a message thanking Brandy** for all her hard work. Thanks.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 22 - First Blood

Paul, as usual, bounded in the door enthusiastically, as if he was expecting a treasure trove and not a rundown flat that had only one quality piece of furniture in it, and that was the bed. His happiness deflated upon seeing Charles on the rickety rocking chair, bottle in hand. "G-d Damnit, man. What happened?"

"She rejected me before I could ask," Charles Bingley the Third said, in his best enunciation, which at the moment wasn't very good. He held the bottle up. "Drink?"

There were no glasses, but Paul accepted and took a swallow from the bottle. "You were going to ask?"

"Not yet. I can't ... I cannot give you up. Yet." He was not happy when Paul would not relinquish the bottle, but he did not get up from his chair, and only swiped at it like a cat after a dangling string. "Her brother – I wrote her brother. To court her."

"And?"

"And he's Thomas."

"I know you're smashed, but you will have to give me a bit more intelligence than that."

"You might not know him," Charles said. "I didn't ren – remember him. From Stephen's party. Where we met."

"I'm afraid I remember little of that party that did not involve the wine or you," Paul said. "Her brother? You said he was a churchman."

"Vicar. Of Lambton."

"Where is that?"

"Seven miles from my home. Just installed last year." He smiled. "Not married."

"Of course not. Handsome?"

"I wasn't looking. Good speaker. Come to think of it, not my type."

Paul sat down on the edge of the bed, the only other surface available. "So you are saying that you wrote her brother, and he wrote you a refusal?"

"No. He wrote her. She – she knows. About him. His attempts to reform and whatnot. All he had to say was he saw me at a party. What else, I don't know, but she called me over, told me that much. I think she still wanted to marry me."

"You've lost me."

"To keep her brother's secret or something. If I kept his secret, she would marry me. I said, I'd keep it anyway, and walked out. I wanted to marry her because I love her."

"So why don't you tell her that?"

"Because she asked me if I loved someone else, and I said yes." He looked up at Paul. "Just please ... love me. I need to be loved. By someone. Anyone."

Paul obliged him. There was some talk, some muttered phrases scattered across time, but none of it stuck in either of their minds. Charles was frantic, stumbling with his drunkenness but desperate all the same. The drink had not relaxed him, but being in Paul's arms did, and he settled at last. "I love you."

"I know. I love you, too."

"Stephen ... his party ruined my life and he brought us together, so I think it's even."

"He threw great parties."

"He did." Charles asked, "What happened to him?"

"The pox."

"Oh," was all Charles said at first. It was not the first time he'd heard of this. It was a comparably good death, to exposure and ridicule followed by hanging. Normal people got the pox, too. It was an equalizer among sinners. "Is he still alive?"

"I heard he is in a sanitarium in Scotland. It may not be accurate, but it was the last news of him, and it was recent. A few weeks ago."

"I would cross myself but I don't want to move."

Paul chuckled despite himself.

"I don't want to die like that. Even when I wanted to die, it wasn't like that. It's too slow, too painful. Too degrading. You don't have it, do you?"

"Charles. Please."

"Because I heard, you can hide it. The medicine makes it seem like it goes away but it just gets worse inside you."

"I don't have the pox, and neither do you."

"So far." He turned, and faced Paul. "I think I might have been happy with her. No pox. No friends and old lovers dropping right and left. No secrets."

"Except her brother."

He laughed. "Yes, except her brother."

"A secret you've so admirably kept for – how long has it been?"

"A day! Perhaps a bit more. G-d, I'm terrible."

"Only with me."

"Hopefully."

Charles kissed him. He had more to say, somewhere in the back of his mind, but it eluded him as he drifted to sleep.

*******************************************

Elsewhere, sleep did not come easy to the Darcys in their guest beds in Somerset. Georgie was the more upset of the two, as Geoffrey had a few drinks in him, mainly due to Edmund's good mood. Still, brandy would not be the solution to their problems tonight.

"If we encourage it, or even allow them to continue seeing each other, the attachment will only grow," she said, because even though it was obvious, it needed saying.

"I suspect if we try to separate them, they will find a way around us. Or try."

"I do not know Mr. Wright at all, but Julia's attempts to reconcile with him have only made the situation worse. And seeing Edmund made it worse. Everything I do is wrong."

"The road to this hell was paved with good intentions."

She stopped moping long enough to hit him with a pillow, which he did not even bother to dodge.

"Let us consider the scenario we have so far refused to discuss," Geoffrey said. "She is in love with Edmund. Edmund is in love with her. She has grounds for an annulment. Even if her husband disagrees, she can press for them, and she might win her case, depending on how sympathetic the bishop is. So your concern must be that Edmund will immediately marry her, because otherwise she will be totally abandoned, and if he does, will he love her as a proper husband should? His track record leaves something to be desired." When she did not answer immediately, he said, "You were thinking it, and you do have her best interests at heart. They are looking at the present because they are in love and at the same time in pain and that is all they can see. You are looking at the future."

"You know me so well. I am fortunate you are my husband."

"I know you are."

This did not earn him a slap, but a kiss. "I love you."

"I know," he said, which did earn him a swat. "So, now it is in the open. We try to steer her back to marriage, or towards adultery and hope for the best."

"Edmund has to be confronted about his intentions," she said.

"Yes."

"We have to put our feet down about it."

"Yes."

"In the morning."

"Yes. In the morning."

Everything would be brighter and better in the morning.

*******************************************

It was not brighter in the morning. Georgiana did not go on her morning walk because it rained – a terrible, hard, pouring rain. Mr. Wilkinson made some comment about it being good for the crops, and they stayed indoors. Alison continued her math lessons with Edmund, who had all but concluded his business in town and was drawing it out for the pretense. William decided, for some reason, to attempt to climb a chimney – from the inside – but was not tall enough to reach the bricks, nor did he have much to hold on to. He only succeeded in dislodging a chunk of wood, and the ash fell on his head, at which point he ran crying to his mother, covered in soot like a chimney sweep. He could barely see, so he couldn't find her at first and ruined Mrs. Wilkinson's new white gown by bumping into her, then his father's breeches, then knocked over an end table before they caught him and carried him to Georgiana, who was in the nursery, reading to Brian.

She did not scold him – not while he was so filthy, as the bath served as good as any scolding as Nurse scrubbed away, going on about Master William's safety the whole time and how he ought to be more cautious and not put his mother in a fright. Not that Georgie was in one, but that was hardly the point. It made for an interesting morning and no one's feelings were hurt – if anything, the stained gown was a source of amusement to Mrs. Wilkinson.

The sky cleared in time for dinner. They were invited to the house of one of Mr. Wilkinson's friends, who was celebrating the birth of a grandchild and invited everyone in the area. Georgie gave Edmund a stern glance as they climbed into the carriage, which was all she needed to do to warn him about his behavior.

The Wrights were in attendance. There was no reason for them not to be, if the guests of a guest of the Wilkinsons were also present, but the table was long and did not allow for a good view of them, closer to the middle than the end, where the Darcys sat with Edmund.

They passed the long meal talking with the couple next to them, who had traveled extensively in the Peaks district and had even once toured Pemberley when the house was open for visitors. They were honored to meet the heir to Pemberley, sitting right beside them as if to remind them he was human, though he did appreciate the comments on his behalf about his home.

"You must be excited, to be mistress of such a place," the woman next to Georgie said to her.

"I have known it all my life, so it is not intimidating," she said. "My husband has far more to say on the subject." She was busy envisioning pricking Geoffrey's swelling ego. Edmund smirked in her general direction, as if he knew what she was thinking, because he probably did.

They were so busy, they did not encounter the Wrights the entire evening. At a much later hour, after drinking and some entertainment, a sleepy party returned to their carriages and to Cheswick Park, where an unfamiliar carriage was waiting for them.

It was Mr. Wilkinson who approached his neighbor, standing on the road to the front of the house. "Mr. Wright, whatever is the matter – "

"Forgive me," he said, in a cold and deliberate manner. "I do not mean to disturb you or Mrs. Wilkinson. My business is with Mr. Bingley."

"Surely this can wait for the morning?"

"It cannot. Please go inside."

"Mr. Wright, this is my land – "

"We will leave, to speak to Mr. Wright," Edmund announced, climbing first out of his carriage. "On his own property. Forgive us."

Mr. Wilkinson was going to say something, but his wife dragged him into the house. Mr. Wright retreated to the lawn, far enough away for the servants to not overhear them, at least not more than he wanted them to, and Edmund followed, at a safe distance, with Geoffrey by his side and Georgiana a step behind them.

"Mr. Bingley," Mr. Wright said, "I challenge you to a duel."

"Duels are illegal, Mr. Wright," Geoffrey said.

"It is only to first blood."

"How do you know? They do not always go that way."

Edmund interrupted Geoffrey with a raised hand. "How did you know?"

"You confirmed my suspicions by not even inquiring as to what this was about. It should have been the first thing out of your mouth. But if you must know, she said your Christian name in passing tonight. How you managed it before your own arrival, I do not know, but your sister's sudden friendship with my wife solidified my suspicions." He stood perfectly straight. He did not appear armed, though he could be hiding a pistol in his coat. "Are you even going to deny that you violated my wife?"

"I did not violate her," Edmund said. "Your marriage, yes. Her person, no. Where is she?"

"I do not see how that is your concern, Mr. Bingley."

"It is my concern," Georgie sad, stepping out in front. "Where is Mrs. Wright?"

"Safe at home, but unharmed, if that is what you are thinking. I struck her but once in my life, and I am deeply ashamed of it. Nonetheless I have every right to know her comings and goings, and if she constantly excels at slipping past the guards, to prevent her from doing so."

"Geoffrey, get my things."

"Georgie – "

"_Now_."

He did not need to be told a third time, and took off running in the direction of the house.

"Mr. Wright – "

"My terms may interest you. If I win, you will publically admit you are an adulterer with the most lecherous intentions without mentioning my wife's name and end all business you have in this shire. If I lose, I will agree to Julia's request and annul our marriage."

"She – when did she say that?"

"That is not important."

"You have her locked up in her own home! I would say it is very important," Georgie shouted.

"It was after you accused her, after you did whatever you did to her," Edmund said. "I've never made any promises to her regarding her future, never even discussed the possibilities of an annulment even if there are grounds for it, which we both know there are. You made it so she screamed to be free of you, and damned the consequences for the rest her life. What kind of husband is that?"

"If you do not let Julia go as she pleases, I will call for the constable," Georgie said. "And then he will have his say on an illegal duel."

"Mrs. Darcy, this is not – "

"I make it my business!" Only Edmund's hand grabbing her arm prevented her from going any further towards Wright. She turned to her brother. "Accept the duel."

"What?"

"Right now. Accept his terms and appoint a champion."

He caught her meaning. "That is hardly a fair fight."

"He has her locked up!"

Seeing he could not negate Georgie's indignation, Edmund released his sister and addressed Wright. "If I agree to your terms – a duel, now, on your land and with no constable present, will you bring Mrs. Wright so that my sister may be assured of her well-being?"

"On my land?"

"On your land."

"It is too dark. It will have to be blades, not pistols."

"That is acceptable to my champion. I cannot fight myself."

Mr. Wright considered this. "Agreed."

"We will wait for my husband," Georgie said, and fortunately, Geoffrey appeared in time for them to leave, carrying her sword and a bundle.

"What in the hell is going on?"

"He has her locked up. What do you think is going to happen?" Georgie said, taking the bundle from him. "I'll meet you."

"You won't lose us?"

"Please." And with that, she was gone.

They walked, following Mr. Wright at a healthy distance, between the Wilkinson land and his, and finally crossing over so that the lights in the windows of his house came into view.

"I apologize for appointing your wife my champion," Edmund whispered, "but she didn't give me an option."

"It would be foolish to do otherwise. I'm not well enough to fence. Not in the dark."

"She won't kill him, will she?"

"No. She's been far angrier at people and not killed them, so he may be considered safe – for a time."

The servants – the few of them that were outside, all male – seemed to be expecting them. He barked orders at them, and one returned with two blades. Another with Mrs. Wright, who freed herself from his grasp and ran into Edmund's arms. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to – it just happened. I didn't even know it happened until we were home, and – "

"It is not your fault," he said, wiping her tears with his thumb. "All of this is my fault, from the very beginning. And if not for my sister, it might end here. Instead, we can only hope and pray she does not render your husband lame."

"I was hysterical. Please, let me try to talk to him – "

"He has offered to annul the marriage, if you win."

"It's true," Geoffrey said, keeping his eyes not on them but Mr. Wright and his men. "He has. If that is what you want, now is the time to ask for it, and have someone fight for it."

"This is my fault," Edmund repeated. "If you walk from him because of my behavior at our first meeting, and are loosed to the world with no money or shelter, I will provide for you, even if you choose another. I promise. Geoffrey can vouch for me – Geoffrey?"

"Personally I think you've all gone insane," Geoffrey replied, "except for my wife, who was already touched. But yes, I will hold him to his word. Edmund, as we can plainly see, is unable to tell a lie. Otherwise we wouldn't be ending a marriage with an illegal duel, at night, in a field and surrounded by hostile men loyal to the man we're dueling." He frowned, and turned at the approach of his wife. Georgie was wearing her short kimono for fighting, and carrying the remains of her gown, which she had shredded to be out of it so quickly. Her head was bare.

"Mrs. Darcy?" Mrs. Wright was not sure she recognized her.

"I am just as mad as Edmund claims me to be," she replied. "A moment." And she took Julia aside, to talk to her in a hushed tone.

"Who is that?" Mr. Wright shouted from his side of the field.

"My wife, and Mr. Bingley's champion," Geoffrey said. He crossed the field without Edmund or Georgie, so that he was within striking distance of Mr. Wright, or in distance to be struck. "Mr. Wright, I do not know you. We have never had a prolonged discussion about anything, however mundane, and now we meet over this very personal matter. So I will say this in all fairness: You should decline this duel and make amends with your wife, if it can still be done. It is not a fair fight."

"I should not have to fight a woman. I don't think I can."

"You will and she will beat you. She may kill you." Geoffrey's voice did not waver in the face of Mr. Wright's grin. "You are laughing, but you should be listening instead. She has killed men before – one of them a fiancé to one of her friends. And she will, without hesitation, kill you if she sees it necessary to protect Mrs. Wright. Retract your duel request and go inside, and sort your private business out with your wife and not with us by proxy."

"You say she has killed?" he laughed.

"I have never admitted it to anyone until now," Geoffrey said. "That is my concern for your safety."

"There are witnesses here."

"And how will it look in court if you claim a woman tried to kill you? That you fought a duel with one? Either way, you lose."

Mr. Wright looked as though he was considering it, then shook his head. "If Mr. Bingley wishes to select such a champion, so be it." He snapped his finger, and his man presented Geoffrey with the dueling rapier on a pillow. Geoffrey bowed and accepted, and returned to where Edmund was standing.

"Can she win with his sword?" Edmund said.

"I do not doubt it," he said, and Georgie returned, holding Mrs. Wright's hand. "Georgie, you are to fight with a rapier. Is that acceptable to you?"

"Whatever." She removed her own sword from her shoulder strap, touched it to her forehead, then passed it to Geoffrey, taking the rapier instead. "Julia – are these terms acceptable to you?"

"Nothing about how this has come about is acceptable to me," she said, "but I cannot change that. I do not want you to fight."

"I won't lose. Edmund would."

"To be plain, she's right," Edmund said.

"Georgie," Geoffrey said, "Mr. Wright has refused to call this off and reconcile with his wife."

She looked to Edmund, who said, "Having been through one long dissolution of a marriage already, I know its pain, and would rather this one, if it must end, end quickly." He put his arm around Julia, now that he was sort of free to do so. "You will not be thrown to circumstance. You are the victim and you will be cared for."

"I did violate my marriage."

"Your husband seems to have made his peace with it enough to decide a course of action," Georgie said. "Did he hurt you?"

"No. He had the servant do it, the one who followed us. He didn't strike – he just dragged. It only hurt because I fought him."

"Julia," Georgie said, "you do not have to make excuses for those who harm you."

"I cannot go back to that house." She was shivering, and Edmund removed his coat and put it over her. "I cannot go back."

"This will not take long," Georgie said, and rapier in hand, proceeded to meet Mr. Wright on the field. "Mr. Wright." She bowed instead of curtseying. "Mr. Darcy will be my second. I understand this is to first blood."

"It is."

"And the marshal?"

He gestured to one of the servants, not in livery. "This is my master woodsman. I know he is loyal to me, but he is also a fair man. Nor would he see a lady harmed, so that he agreed to do this is impressive."

"Very well."

They walked to even ground, and the woodsman stood between them but a step away, seeing that they were both starting from an equal distance to him. Geoffrey stayed to the side as Georgiana raised her rapier, copying the stance of her opponent, which required her digging her geta into the dirt.

"Ready. Set. Begin!"

Wright lunged, but the woman he expected to meet was not there. Before he had even moved, she took off directly towards him and leapt over him, landing in a roll behind him. She somersaulted to her feet and struck him at the nape of his neck with the back of the rapier's handle. He dropped like a sack, and she rolled him over and, dropping her own blade, she picked up his elaborate rapier and dragged it slowly across the very tip of his nose, and held it up for inspection. Then the light shined on it, the red against steel could be seen. "First blood, no? Those were the requirements?"

The stunned woodsman stuttered something and ran to his master, as did the rest of the servants.

"He'll come around," Georgie said, and as she tried to leave him behind to return to Edmund and Mrs. Wright, Geoffrey grabbed her in an embrace.

"_What is it now?_" she said in Japanese.

"_I'm always afraid for you_," he replied. "_Even when I know I shouldn't be_." He kissed her on the cheek. "Thank you for not dragging it out."

"It would have suited no one." She looked back at Mr. Wright, who was slowly returning to consciousness with the aid of smelling salts and more panicked servants than were necessary.

"Get her away from me!" shouted a confused Wright as he returned to his senses, limited as they were. "I'm bleeding – where am I bleeding?"

"The tip of your nose, sir," his man said.

"That woman – she's a demon."

"That is not the first time I've been called that," Georgie said as she retreated to Mrs. Wright. "I am suspicious that it is true. Mrs. Wright, if the Wilkinsons do not offer you lodgings while this is sorted out, we will go to an inn with you."

"I cannot – I cannot thank you – " But she was too shaken to speak, and nearly had to be carried, crying the whole way back to Cheswick tears that should have been shed long ago.

Mr. Wilkinson was standing in the lit doorway, awaiting their arrival. He waited for them to speak.

"Mr. Wilkinson," Geoffrey said, "you have been a very gracious host, and I feel as though we can ask no more of you, yet we must. In the name of Christian mercy, will you take in a woman with nowhere to go?"

Mr. Wilkinson did not hesitate. He was more serious than they had ever seen him. "Mrs. Wright is always welcome here." He added, "Her husband, less so. Come, child, and we'll see you in."

She gave up her tight hold on Edmund to be led in by Mrs. Wilkinson, who greeted her with a welcoming smile and no questions. Though she did give a second glance to Georgiana, she withheld comment, her energies concentrated on the woman whose life was in pieces before her.

"Mr. Wilkinson," Edmund bowed.

"Mr. Bingley."

"You have every right to refuse us entrance. We just fought Mr. Wright in an illegal duel and are now absconding with his wife. You could be exposed to society's approbation because of our behavior."

Mr. Wilkinson shook his head. "I am too old to care what society thinks of how I conduct my business. If they look down on me for sheltering a helpless woman, then I look down on them."

"You knew all along?"

"We realized it quickly enough. You will do right by her?"

He nodded. "I will do my best."

"Good, because otherwise there would be a second duel tonight, and I am too old and too tired to fight it." He put a hand on Edmund's shoulder, and welcomed his return to the house.

... Next Chapter - Mahakala


	23. Mahakala

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the delay in posting and thank you for telling me my story had been moved to the "Emma" category. I don't know why that happened, but FFnet didn't tell me about, so I appreciated the notes from people.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 23 - Mahakala

The immediate details were dealt with surprisingly expediently for the sleepy Cheswick Park. Mrs. Wright was separated from Edmund (to his displeasure) and shown to a guest room, relieved of her shawl that was wet from the mist and given a new one, and the servants were shooed after bringing hot tea and food for her, leaving her alone with Mrs. Wilkinson and Georgiana, who gained more than a passing glance – but no questions – for her appearance.

"You're not hurt, are you?" was Julia's first question, of all things.

"No, of course not." Georgie slipped out of her sandals and walked barefoot instead. "I could not duel in my ball gown," she replied to Mrs. Wilkinson's unasked question. "Well, I could, but it would be very inconvenient."

"You didn't have to fight him," Julia insisted.

"I might not have – if he hadn't locked you up. He said he did. Is it true?"

Julia responded with a sob, and they comforted her as the story began to emerge.

*******************************************

"You are nothing but a whore!" Albert Wright shouted, as his wife cowered against the dresser. "Edmund Bingley. How did you even manage it? How long have you been with him?"

"Once. I told you before, it was only once – "

His face was livid and terrifying. "He was right in front of me. If I'd known he was divorced earlier, perhaps I would have suspected this kind of behavior from him."

"His wife cheated on _him_."

"So he is familiar with the mechanics of the process." He paced, but did not approach her, for which she was grateful. They were alone, but she did not doubt the servants were on the other side of the door, with their ears pressed against the wood. "Christ, I'd ruin him if I could. If I was involved in that damn Indian business that everyone wants a piece of. The rest of them are so greedy a smear on his name wouldn't cause them to withdraw their signatures – immoral ingrates, the lot of them!" He shook his fists. "I'll have to fight him."

"Albert!"

"For my honor – and yours. He violated you. He violated my wife, my prop – "

"I am not your property!"

Maybe it was the volume of her voice, or even the fact that she'd shouted at him in the first place, but it caused him to stop in his tracks, and face her, silent but for the moment.

"I am not a thing," she said, her voice now failing. "I am not part of your life's collections. I am a person – "

"I have always treated you as such – "

"Who needs to be loved."

"I have loved you in every possible way – "

"You know very well what I mean. Even if you were a whole man, capable of the most basic – "

He raised his hand to strike her and she cowered, only to open her eyes when it didn't come. Albert stood over her, still. He could not do it. He was not that bad. Perhaps, she thought, it would be better if he was, and that would solve the issue once and for all.

"Even if Mr. Bingley had not done as you accused and I admitted, he_ violated_ me, and made me with child, it would be enough that he loves me with no pretensions, and even with no hope for a future. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose, and he loves me all the same. For me." She shook her hand against her breast. "And I love him for it."

Albert's fist tightened and he swung it – but hit the dresser, not her. The force of it knocked her music box over, the one he bought her for their anniversary, and broke when it hit the floor.

"You do not know what it is," she continued, "to love for no reason. With no preconditions."

"It is a baseless, useless, vile thing."

"It is not! It is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, and I am sick of denying it. Albert, please. I wanted to love you this way."

"You know very well my limitations! Or must you constantly remind me?"

She gathered her strength. She would say it now or never say it. "You never loved me. Not just in that way, but the whole person – you never loved me. You were doing me a favor, and I am grateful for it, by marrying me, and I tried to make a life with you, and you tried to make a life with me. But it failed and every time I have tried to make amends, you have rejected me." She swallowed her tears. "This was never a marriage and whatever it is, I want no more of it."

He backed away, one careful step at a time. "He has bewitched you." His anger was more subtle now, more hardened but not so loud. "We were happy – "

"We thought we were."

"He is young and handsome and he has ruined you. You are not the woman I married. You are changed." He straightened up. "I will kill him."

"No!"

"I will duel him and I will kill him."

"Albert – "

He swung open the door, and she ran to stop him. He did not stop her himself, but called a footman, and said, "Mrs. Wright is upset. She needs to be in her room."

"Albert, no! If you do this, you will regret it for the rest of your life!"

"Perhaps," he said, "but I will regret it if I do not. I am damned either way, and you have brought me to this ruin." He turned so calmly to the servant and said, "If she does not want to stay, restrain her. She is not well."

"Albert! For the love of G-d, no!"

But the servant did as he was told, and Albert Wright walked off. She pulled against the grasp of a much stronger man, and was pulled so hard back into her chambers it almost broke her wrist. She screamed, and banged against the door that was shut and locked in front of her. She continued banging until she had no energy left, and sunk to the floor, leaning against the wood that kept her from escaping, and from Albert's intentions. And she cried.

*******************************************

By the end of the story, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, in Mrs. Wilkinson's embrace. Georgie sat on the chair across from her, cross-legged, and listening carefully.

"If Mr. Wright is true to his word, he will get you your annulment," Georgiana said. "He lost the duel, after all. And in front of plenty of witnesses. He will have the cut on his nose and the bruise on his neck to prove it. And as Edmund said he would provide for you, I will hold him to his word."

"Even if not, you are welcome here, until this is sorted out," Mrs. Wilkinson said. "I would have consoled you, had I known. But I thought it was something to leave well enough alone. There, child. You should bathe, and then you should rest. We have clothes for you, and we'll fetch the rest from Mr. Wright in the morning."

They did not ask Julia to speak again. She offered only a few mumbles before giving into exhaustion, and embraced Georgie. "I cannot thank you."

Georgie put her hand on Julia's head. "You are not required to."

*******************************************

Mr. Wilkinson, more composed than he usually presented himself, took Geoffrey and Edmund into his study and ordered up a very strong round of drinks, though the portions the servants poured were small.

"How should I begin to apologize?" Edmund said, after wetting his throat with whiskey. "For trampling on your hospitality with such dishonest intentions. Or bringing in my sister and cousin to be party to it."

"Until this point, Mr. and Mrs. Darcy have been a delight, as have their children," he said, to which Geoffrey uncomfortably smiled in response. "Now, I feel an obligation as to ask what your intentions were, Mr. Darcy."

"Edmund requested our presence after he learned about Mrs. Wright's condition and Mr. Wright's actions against her," he said. "He did not tell us why in the letter, though he would not have invited us if there was not something he needed help with. He was clear from the beginning, when my wife was done strangling him when she heard of the infidelity, that his desire was to see to Mrs. Wright's safety, and he knew my wife could provide it." He added, "She has a ... preoccupation with helping women in awkward circumstances."

"So her intention was not to forward a continuance of the affair?"

"The opposite, to my consternation," Edmund admitted. "I told her to befriend Julia, and she did, and she would not betray her, even to me. She would not tell me about their meetings."

"Her aim was to determine if the marriage could be salvaged," Geoffrey said. "If Mrs. Wright could find resolution with her husband and was truly content to continue living her life as Mrs. Wright. It became clear to us only tonight, when Mr. Wright approached us on the field, that there was no way for them to resolve things between themselves. Mr. Wright offered an annulment as terms of the duel, having no idea he would fight my wife. I warned him not to fight her. He was outmatched. He either did not believe me or did not care."

Mr. Wilkinson nodded. "A man's honor is not to be trifled with. It can blind him." He took a long swallow from his glass. "Well, what's done is done, and the rest can be sorted in the morning. Mrs. Wright will stay under our care, and we shall see if Mr. Wright is good to his word about the annulment, or comes begging for forgiveness on our doorstep. Either way, do you think he will report your wife?"

"For an illegal duel he requested? I doubt it."

"Yes, and would the constable believe him? Mrs. Darcy has that on her side." He grinned. "An odd woman, your wife. I feel privileged to have known her."

"Thank you."

"That and a bit frightened, of course."

Geoffrey nodded. "Of course."

*******************************************

Even with Mrs. Wright in bed and the Wilkinsons giving their last orders for the evening, Edmund's night was not done. Geoffrey pulled him into their chambers, where Georgiana was waiting.

"So, we have ruined a marriage for you," Georgiana said. "And you have made a promise to care for her, at least financially. I only wish that was the end of your problems and not the beginning."

"I love her," Edmund said without hesitation. "I ... I know it is foolish to rush into another marriage, having already done it once, so I will restrain myself, and ask for permission to court her instead."

"And from where will you obtain it? Mr. Wright?" Geoffrey chuckled, ignoring his wife's glare. "Presuming he does press for an annulment, and it occurs, whatever you feel for Mrs. Wright, you ought to high tail it from Somerset, for your sake."

"My business is concluded," Edmund said. "I can only hope it is not ruined. I do not think Mr. Wright has much standing in the community, and if he keeps the identity of his wife's lover a secret, the venture is saved."

"And you only have to explain to Papa how you had an affair and ended a marriage and now are duty-bound to support a woman you've just met," Georgie said.

"Yes, only that." Edmund had to smile at it. He was too exhausted to do otherwise. "Even if I do not marry her, I will provide her with a living until she marries someone else. I know my feelings, but they've guided me wrongly in the past, so I will wait. So you don't have to make me, Georgie."

"Glad to hear it," she said.

*******************************************

Edmund retreated to his chambers for the evening, and the Darcys were about to retire when there was a knock on the door. Sighing, Geoffrey went to open it himself, only to look down at the smaller form looking up at him through the slit. "What is it, darling?"

"I heard Mama fought someone," Alison said.

"And where did you hear that?"

"The maid. She said she was dressed up and there was a sword and a duel or something, so it must have been Mama. May I see her?"

"Of course you can." He opened the door just enough to let her in, and Alison bounded in, clothed in a kimono as a dressing gown above her nightclothes. "Georgie, you have a visitor.

Georgiana was undoing her obi, and let it fall to the floor to hug her daughter. "Hello, Ali-chan."

"Mama, did you fight Mr. Wright?"

"I did."

"Were you in disguise?"

"I was not. He fought me anyway. Your Papa warned him, but he still did it."

"He wasn't very smart then. Was he good?"

"He was good enough to fight Edmund," she said. "He appeared to be."

"She took him out before he really did any fighting," Geoffrey said. "Went right over him and hit him in the back."

"Did he get really hurt?"

"Not much. It was just a duel – not to the death, thank G-d," she said. "He was very brave but not very smart."

"He wasn't smart to fight _you_," Alison said. "I wish I could have seen it. I never get to see you fight anymore."

Georgie offered some reassurance. "Your father may not want to hear this, but I'm sure something will come up. If not, I'll fight Her Highness for you. It won't be real, but it will be fun to watch."

"Thank you, Mama." Alison squealed and squeezed her mother.

"Now get to bed, young lady."

"Yes, Mama." She curtseyed to her father on the way out. "Goodnight, Papa."

"Goodnight, Alison." He nodded to the servant in the hallway. "See her back." When she went off with the servant, he shut the door and ceremoniously collapsed headfirst on the bed.

Georgie removed the last layers of her kimono and climbed up next to him, tugging off his robe for him. "You were very good tonight."

"Am I to be rewarded with a sugar cookie or something? I'm not a child. Just one very exhausted houseguest."

"And very loving husband." She rubbed his back. "I will make it up to you."

He picked his head up from the pillow to look at her. "While you are technically not required to, I will accept the offer all the same."

*******************************************

Breakfast was an odd affair. Julia Wright rose late, and seemed reluctant to join them at the table however eagerly they welcomed her. She was wearing one of Georgie's gowns, which did not precisely fit. She ate slowly, nervously picking apart her muffin and staring at it as if to avoid their prying eyes, which were in turn trying very hard not to pry. While it was not a morning for pretending to make mundane conversation, they only inquired once into her health and let it be.

"It seems we may be cutting our visit short," Geoffrey said to his hosts. "As regrettable as that is, it does raise one additional circumstance we have not yet decided."

"Oh?"

"Whether I'm going to buy my daughter one of those puppies from the store."

"She'll forget about them, surely, once you leave," Edmund said. "And you can find a good breeder with a proper stock."

"She already asked me about it on the way to breakfast," he countered. "And I've seen them. They are not mutts, otherwise he wouldn't be bothering to sell them. Perhaps he can't trace their ancestral lineage back to William the Conqueror, but they are still a known good breed of dogs. Gentle and loyal. And very active, which I think is important."

"You realize in three weeks she may tire of walking that dog every day and hand him to a servant," Georgie said.

"Don't be ridiculous. She's our daughter and I expect far more from her. And her ancestral lineage I _can_ trace." Which caused Mr. Wilkinson to chuckle, and several others followed in turn, including Mrs. Wright.

*******************************************

After breakfast, Mr. Wilkinson sent his solicitor to request some of Mrs. Wright's more critical belongings that she would need for her stay. The offer was responded to by Mr. Wright's butler, who presented two trunks worth but did not offer any further communication. While there was no word yet on the promised annulment, it was clear enough Mr. Wright did not expect his wife's imminent return.

While Julia and Georgie spent the morning in the Nursery with Brian and William, Geoffrey took Alison to town. It was a brief stop, and if there were whispers around town about the previous night's events, he didn't hear them (perhaps because he was not good at hearing whispers). The visit to the shop was brief but successful, and they returned with one puppy, the one with the droopy ears that Alison had taken a liking to. Geoffrey did take several minutes to inspect the animal before the purchase, and discovered him responsive but not aggressive. He did not bite him, not even playfully, but he was eager to sniff and lick skin all that was presented to him. The shopkeeper attested to him being two months old, and a purebred, but had no other proofs of breeding to offer. Geoffrey paid, and Alison did not ask to drive the gig this time because she was busy cradling the puppy.

There was not much time for unhappiness in Cheswick Park that afternoon, as the children were acquainted with the dog. William listened to his mother's stern warning for once, and did not provoke the animal, who was obviously frightened. He held him, and let him sniff his shoes, and Brian cried out with laughter when the dog licked his face, and hugged him like a doll.

"It's your responsibility to decide on a name amongst you," Geoffrey said, principally to Alison.

"What's Japanese for a dog?"

"_Inu_," Georgie answered, and Alison grimaced. "Yes, it's not a good name."

"What's wolf?"

"_Ookami_," Geoffrey and Georgie said in unison. Geoffrey continued, "You could give him a normal dog name. That is always a possibility."

"Mahakala!" Alison squealed. "So he'll protect us!"

"What?" her father said.

"That demon on the tapestry you won't let me hang in our bedchamber," Georgie said. "Alison, choose another name."

"Mahakala." She took the dog out of Brian's hands, causing Brian to cry. "I want to name him Mahakala."

"Mahakala is female."

"How do you know he isn't?"

"Because he isn't." Geoffrey took the dog from her. "Oh, goodness." A quick flip revealed he had forgotten to check in the store and when he guessed, the eager-to-sell owner hadn't corrected him. "The dog is female."

"Mahakala!"

"You can name her Mary," Julia suggested. She had been sitting silently on the sofa on the other side of the room. "Mary protects infant Saviors."

"No. Mahakala. Her name is Mahakala."

William frowned. "It's a dumb name."

"It's not. It's sacred!"

"You're dumb!"

"You're dumber!"

"Children," Georgie said in a way that made them both shush. "You must decide on a name that is both appropriate and pronounceable. Mahakala is not."

"Can we just call her Mala? And not tell people her real name?" Alison tugged at Geoffrey's trouser leg. "Papa, please?"

He looked to his wife, who shrugged. Desperate to resolve the matter, he handed the puppy back to Alison. "Mala it is."

... Next Chapter - (no title yet)


	24. Hurt Feelings

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 24 – Hurt Feelings

Edmund set about packing his things, to be gone the very next day. There was some delay when he discovered Mala had made her bed in a pile of his clothing already packed in the trunk (originally, neatly), but even he did not have the heart to be mad at the dog very long – especially when she licked his face and Julia giggled. It was his only interaction with her that could be described as emotional, as they were carefully chaperoned and separated.

Only the next morning, when it was time for Edmund to depart, did he have a moment alone with her, albeit by the carriage and in plain view of everyone.

"Georgie will write you on my behalf," he said. "As soon as the annulment is official. And I will keep my promise – arrangements will be made for you. You will not be homeless because of my actions."

"They were not entirely your actions," she said, holding his hands. "I could have gone back to him. I still could, I suppose."

"You shouldn't feel – "

"I don't want to," she said. "I can't return to that life, knowing I could have something different – something truly special." She smiled but averted her eyes. "Your father will not be too angry?"

"My father does not get angry, even when he should be. He will be disappointed, but he is a good man and he will get over it," Edmund assured her. "I will see you soon." She squeezed his hands for reassurance, and he smiled. "I promise."

She went back to the Wilkinsons, and Georgie approached him. "Say hello to Papa for me."

"If I can get it in, I will."

"I don't envy you," she said. "You love her. Can you be a good husband to her?"

"I am determined to try."

"Give her time."

He smiled uncomfortably, and climbed into the carriage.

*******************************************

Much to everyone's relief, it was only a day later Mrs. Wright was called to a meeting with the local bishop, called in to the parish for this specific reason. There was no reason for either side not to be expedient; Julia wanted to be free, the Wilkinsons would not invite nor be invited anywhere while they sheltered her, and Mr. Wright likely intended to close the house and either lease it or simply leave until he'd found himself a new bride.

That did not make it a pleasurable experience. Georgiana offered to go with her and Julia accepted, and they traveled with Mr. Wilkinson to the home of the vicar beside the church, where the bishop was lodged. He was a fat, impatient fellow, making his displeasure at the call obvious.

It was Mr. Wright, admirably, who bore the brunt of his anger. On his side was the Vicar, who was responsible for arranging the meeting and backing up Mr. Wright's testimony that their marriage had never been completely consummated, and would never be, and therefore could be annulled.

"Mrs. Wright," the bishop said, mustering what moral authority he could for his voice, "you are aware that, in the dissolution of this marriage, your inheritance is forfeit to Mr. Wright, and he is free of any financial obligations to you."

"I am aware of that, sir." She glanced at her husband, but his face was impassive, and he would not meet her eyes.

"You cannot expect a better living situation than your current one, albeit certain ... deficiencies." He did not look at Mr. Wright. He did not have to. "If you leave him, it is with the clothes on your back, and any personal effects you brought with you into the marriage, and whatever else Mr. Wright sees fit to bestow upon you. It may be nothing at all."

"Yes, Your Excellency."

He looked to Mr. Wright again, who only nodded, and produced the papers. "I have no desire to drag this misfortune out any longer. Please sign your name – your maiden name, if you would."

She did, and her hand was still shaking when she handed the pen over to her now-former husband.

"This union is considered dissolved," the bishop said. He turned to the Vicar. "Do you need me for anything else?"

They turned away, their business disposed, ignoring those both still present and more devastated by the events. Mr. Wright turned to Julia, and bowed very formally. "Miss Richmond."

She curtseyed. "Mr. Wright."

"I'll have your things sent," was all he said, and left, straightening his coat as he went, as if it would return some of his tattered dignity.

"Albert – "

He stopped at the doorway.

She put her hand over her mouth. "Goodbye, Albert."

He softened, if only temporarily. How many regrets would they both live with? "Goodbye, Julia."

When he left she cried, but his back was turned to them, and they could not see if he was doing the same.

*******************************************

"Mama! Mama!" Alison came running to greet the carriage, William and Mrs. Wilkinson in her wake. "Look what Mala can do!" She held up the puppy. "Mala, look at me. Mala!" The dog looked up, panting. "She knows her name."

"So she does," Georgiana said, wondering if it was more the dog responding to noise than anything else. She accepted the pup from her daughter. It sniffed her hand and yelped. "She's quite a happy little thing, isn't she?" She pointed her in Julia's general direction, holding her up to be petted. "Alison, William, you will address Julia as Miss Richmond."

"Why?"

"Because sometimes people change their names," she said, in a tone that did not invite further questioning, and they went inside.

*******************************************

It was only a few hours before trunks began arriving, and the footman from the Wright house announced that the trunks were gifted, courtesy of Mr. Wright. The clothing inside was hers – what use could he have for women's clothing? – and she had no way to carry it all otherwise.

Julia Richmond was more interested in her personal affects, which came the next day, neatly collected and wrapped in her silk gloves for protection. "He is so kind."

"It was probably a servant."

"You will assume the worst, and I will assume the best," she said to Georgie, going through them, but not unpacking them. She would not burden the Wilkinsons beyond measure, even if they were not pushing her or the Darcys, her designated protectors, out. "Mala! No."

"I want to take her!" William shouted, trying to climb the bed as Mala chewed on the lace fringe of the dress.

"You can't. Last time you pulled on her and now she's scared of you," Alison said, coming in behind him.

"Alison. Be nice to your brother."

"He's not nice to my dog!"

"She's not _your_ dog," her mother gently reminded. "She's the family dog. That includes William." Fortunately she had little say in the matter, as Mala avoided both of them by leaping onto Julia's lap, then off the bed, and slammed right into Geoffrey's boots.

Geoffrey, who was carrying his younger son, picked the dog up by the scruff with his free hand and let Brian hold her. "What's the damage?"

"Just some feelings," Julia assured him.

*******************************************

Edmund Bingley was in a position any knowing person would envy. He entered Kirkland late, his satchel containing not only business documents but letters from Mrs. Wright and the Darcys, for his own reading and for his father. Fortunately the first person to greet him after the footman was not a human. "Monkey."

Monkey squealed and climbed up his leg, finding a resting place on his shoulder. Edmund scratched him and nodded to the butler, "Is my father awake?"

"He's in his study, Mr. Edmund."

Setting aside everything but his satchel and Monkey, he knocked on the study door.

"Come."

He pushed the door open. His father sat at the desk, but quickly rose, his face brightening. "Edmund. How are you?"

Edmund did his best to smile. "Father." He bowed, and Monkey leapt from his shoulder to the desk.

"I assume your business in Somerset is concluded?"

"For the most part." He accepted his father's gesture to sit. "There is something I must tell you."

His father was a good man. Charles Bingley II was not immediately dismissive. He was merely hesitant. "What is it?"

*******************************************

Lady Heather Maddox just shook her head, setting the letter aside and out of her curious husband's reach. As if she hadn't read enough to him. "It is so like her."

"You don't even know this _Miss Richmond_."

"Like Georgie and you know it." She shook her head. "She's helplessly protective and Edmund knew it."

Frederick held his daughter, who was sleeping in his arms. "There's more to it, no doubt."

"I will not tell all of her secrets."

"I hope not. I'm just discussing the ones involving Edmund and certain married – "

" – not_ anymore_, apparently – "

" – woman from Somerset." He grinned. "The cuckold has become the cuckolder."

"That is not a proper use of the word."

"It should be."

She suppressed a grin and summoned Nurse to relieve them of Danielle, who was kissed by both of her parents before being carried to bed. She was already up far too late listening with Stewart to their Uncle Danny's stories.

"Georgie and Mr. Darcy are staying in Somerset with Miss Richmond for the time being," Heather explained as her husband finally could stand and began to remove his woolen layers. "And from there, to Lancashire."

"With Miss Richmond?"

"Yes."

"And not to London? I am disappointed."

"They are not coming to London because of people like _you_, no doubt, who love to talk scandal."

Frederick smirked. "Then we will simply have to go to Lancashire and talk scandal in person."

"We will not."

"Are you not willing to support your dear friend Georgiana?"

"She has not asked."

"You will not just offer your support?"

"Not with the ulterior motive of providing my husband with amusement," she replied. "If she does invite us – well, that is another matter."

*******************************************

"I love her," Edmund said in his defense.

"Good," was the reply, "because you must marry her. You are obliged."

"I know." He had not seen his father so disappointed in him, not so openly, and he was not enjoying it. "I know what I did was wrong, but I've tried to make it right. And I might have made some more mistakes along the way, but I promised her I would make her happy, and I would." He allowed himself, briefly, to bask in the memory of holding her in his arms, however strained the circumstances were at the time. "I've never felt this way about anyone. I want to spend the rest of my life with her."

His father sighed and fell into his chair, ceasing his pacing. He looked older, and weary. "You were not the impulsive one."

"I know."

"And I thought you might be too calculating in your affairs, though it seems, I am wrong again." Bingley did, at least, smile. "If you do love her – and I hope you do – I do look forward to another wedding, but I wonder how we will manage it. I imagine this Mr. Wright is not too well-known, and will have every desire to suppress the scandal."

"I hope he will."

"You said you have made arrangements for her."

"Geoffrey and Georgie will take her to Lancashire, and we will write each other, and I will send her whatever she needs. If by some trick of fate we do not marry, I will send her a living. If not, well ..." He could not stop to think. This was a serious presentation, not a daydream. "I was thinking, perhaps, that it would be better if we did not marry in England. Formally. We could do something here, for the family, but make it official elsewhere."

"Where? Scotland?"

He squirmed. "India."

His father's face was not dismissive, only curious. "Continue."

"I was thinking previously that I ought to go, if I am to become fully invested in the business, and she has never traveled. If we married there, and returned, no one would question it. It would be far from the Ton's minds. I've written her about it the idea, though obviously, I have yet to receive a response."

"You will have to learn some Hindi. I will expect it of you."

"Of course, Father."

"And it is not an easy language. Nor will your mother appreciate you running off to India with your new bride. Or perhaps this Mrs. Wright will not like the idea."

"I have considered that. It is only an idea."

"It may be a good one." He nodded to himself. "You will tell your mother. I will wake her and you will tell her, because I am terrified of doing it, and then we will sort this all out in the morning."

"I only wish it could all be that soon."

Now his father really did smile. "The year between the moment I met your mother and the day I married her was the worst year of my life."

"You courted her for a year?"

"There were ... some complications. Ask me about it when I am more awake or more inebriated. Or better yet, ask your Uncle Darcy, when you are eager to distract him."

*******************************************

"India! Oh, I cannot imagine it," Jane Bingley said, more emotionally concerned with the people intending to visit it than the country itself.

"You are not mad?"

"A little, when my son misbehaves, but it seems you did that long ago and I cannot be mad at you for long," she said. "You are in love."

Edmund blushed. "You can tell?"

"You did just say it," his father said as he stood over him.

"Charles! That is not the point," his mother said. "You can see it plain on his face. He is in love with this woman. Oh, how I wish to meet her. You cannot go to India too quickly. I will not have it. You must be married here, even privately. You will not deprive me of a wedding."

Edmund could not, and dared not, express his relief. "Of course not, Mother."

"Though I would go to India myself, to see you married and happy, I wish that I would not have to." She opened her arms, and her son embraced her. "My baby's getting married."

"Again," Bingley said quietly, with a roll of his eyes.

*******************************************

"India?" Charles Bingley III shook his head. "I always thought my brother was too sane to belong in our family. Apparently I was wrong."

"What's this?" Paul said, looking up from his dinner. Well, it was more like breakfast at this point.

"My brother intends, if she consents, to take his new wife to India to be married, out of the public eye."

"This is the wife you just told me about."

"Yes."

"The one who is still technically married to another man?"

"This letter is dated two days ago. She may not still be married."

Paul chuckled. "Oh right; I'd forgotten. So your brother is to be married twice now with no deaths in between."

"Correct."

"And he was once cheated on and this time he did the cheating."

"I believe she did the cheating, and he was merely a partner in the affair."

"Either way."

"Yes," Charles said. "Either way."

"And he doesn't approve of _you?_"

Charles snickered. "He is improving. Life has humbled him, I think."

"I can't imagine how. So you could marry his first wife, just to make the situation more bizarre. And I imagine it would streamline some family events."

"Alas, she is taken. That and she is a spiteful woman I can't stand to be in the same house with."

"So," Paul said, "like my intended."

They both laughed at that.

*******************************************

"India. Can you imagine it?"

Georgie looked up from Alison's trunk, which she was supervising the packing of, to speak more directly with Miss Richmond. "What's this now?"

"He proposes that we marry – officially – in India. To be away from the scandal if we married here."

"That seems dramatic. What happened to Scotland? Has everyone forgotten it?"

"Have you been to India?"

"Only briefly," she said, suddenly guilty that she was passing judgment on someone considerably less traveled than her. "He is either thinking romantically or in terms of what is good for the family business – both of which, I would say are not beyond his style as of late. You have only been an unattached woman but a few days – "

"What other proposals am I considering? Where are my other suitors?" Julia was adamant. It was in a way invigorating to watch her come out of her shell, even while still living somewhat literally under her husband's shadow, as his land overshadowed Cheswick. It was a sigh of relief to everyone when he departed for Ireland the previous day, and they watched a light come into her eyes that had not been there before. She played with the children and the dog, she learned card games, and she read and reread Edmund's letters to her, which were several a day, and composed long replies. "It is frightening, is it not, to live like this? And yet I am so happy. I did not know I could be this happy."

Inside, Georgie was relieved. Outside, she was merely supportive. "I am glad. I also hope, for his sake, he continues to make you this away, if he intends to keep all of his limbs."

"I would say you were joking," Julia replied, "but I suspect you are not."

Georgie only shrugged.

*******************************************

Despite the talk in the neighborhood that prevented them from going beyond the grounds, and had to be relayed via the servants, the Wilkinsons were not eager to see their guests go, and let them depart only with great spectacle and emotion.

"You are welcome back," Mr. Wilkinson said to Geoffrey, "though perhaps, next time, with a bit less happenings surrounding your visit."

"I can do my best, Mr. Wilkinson."

Mrs. Wilkinson hugged Miss Richmond. "I suspect we will not see each other again."

"Please, do not say that! I cannot bear the thought," she replied. "I will invite you to the wedding."

"Only make promises you can keep," the older woman said. "But I am glad I could be of aid to you, and I think you will be happier now. There is no reason, if you can possibly manage it, not to be happy in life, Miss Richmond."

"Thank you, Mrs. Wilkinson."

Mr. Wilkinson approached Georgiana after all the children were in their carriage. "Will you convey a message to your father, Mrs. Darcy?"

"Of course."

"I very much value him as a business associate, but should he wish to send someone else to continue relations with people in the area – can he please send someone who is already married?"

... Next Chapter - The Gambling House Showdown


	25. The Gambling House Showdown

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 25 – The Gambling House Showdown

"He wrote! He wrote," Julia Richmond said with all the enthusiasm of a child on their birthday upon being handed Edmund's letter. They were hardly in the door in Lancashire before one of the servants presented her with it as her trunks were carried to the guest room. She leaned away as Georgie leaned in. "He is courting me and has every right to write in private."

Georgie frowned but did move away, letting the footman relieve her of her jacket and parasol as the maid approached her with her own letters, this time a stack. "We have procured a family dog. The arrangements for it – her – will surely not be followed to their entirety. You may want to roll up the carpets."

Her abigail unsuccessfully tried to hide her grin. "Yes, Mrs. Darcy."

On cue, Mala bounded in, followed by the overexcited children. The servants were ready to grab them, but not the dog, who scurried into the dining room but did not succeed in jumping up to the table as she was so eager to do. Instead she barked at the visible trays of food until Geoffrey picked her up. "That is not where your food shall be kept, Mala."

"Mahakala," his daughter corrected, resisting the tug of her nurse. "Can she stay with me?"

"Darling, she is a dog. She sleeps outside."

"But she'll be cold! And wet at night. And she'll be so lonely."

"When she's housebroken she can sleep in the house, and not a day before," he said, holding Mala under his arm like a package, as she was still small enough to handle in such a manner without complaint on her end. "Believe your father in his wisdom on the matter."

After Alison was led off for a bath, Georgie approached him. "I remember a little boy who used to let Sir Gawain sneak into his room at night."

"And I remember paying dearly for it," he replied. "In shredded clothing, ruined bed sheets, and punishments I would rather not perform on my children." He changed the subject by addressing Julia, who entered with the letter tucked under her arm. "Miss Richmond. Welcome to our home – our summer home, though we are often here in other seasons."

She curtseyed. "Mr. Darcy. Mrs. Darcy. Thank you for your hospitality."

"It is our pleasure," Georgiana said, without a hint of dishonesty.

*******************************************

Edmund was on airs – after he'd received his first letter, post-annulment, from Julia. He had faced his terrifying Uncle Darcy, who was surprisingly quiet on the whole business, something that made him all the more frightful initially. Only later did his Aunt Darcy reassure him.

"He knows not to disapprove after the fact," Elizabeth said. "It cannot be changed, and you are not a child to be scolded like one."

Edmund smiled and thanked his aunt, and they went to services, where the Vicar gave one of his summer speeches on contemplation and repentance. Mr. Emerson had a light touch, which was what so many of his sleepy parishioners liked about him, and the curate Mr. Hammond nodded with approval. Mr. Hammond's position was temporary, and there was already a possibility for the curacy – a college friend of the Vicar, a Mr. Hyde, who was visiting to see if the position would be made available. There was still some hesitancy to both a young Vicar and a young curate, both unmarried, but he was patient and content to live in the inn at Lambton until the community decided officially.

Edmund did not reveal, and was not obligated to reveal, the contents of the letter, though he did say that Miss Richmond was not against a move, however temporary, to India. It was one thing that they were so openly talking marriage arrangements when they were technically only courting, but how could they not? And how could they not marry?

*******************************************

"And that is the news," Charles Bingley III said to Danny Maddox in his study, finishing off the letter from his brother. "They are to be married for sure. There is just some discrepancy of finalizing it, her being so recently married."

Danny only said, "Of course."

"I am happy for Edmund. He deserves to be loved."

"He does."

Charles set aside the letter, no further news for the moment, and they set out on their evening task of entertainment. Frederick and Lady Heather Maddox had left for the north, leaving Danny alone as he chose not to follow them. Charles felt some obligation to see him about the town, but it was not a heavy obligation. Danny was well-mannered and made things light, and he was eager for a challenge (often more than his competitors or partners), whether it be dancing or playing tile-based games. He was still trying to master chess, but needed to constantly be reminded of where the pieces were, so he did not ask it of many people. While he did not flirt with or seriously court women (though he did allow himself to be flirted with), he did not mind being the spectacle at assemblies if it meant him gaining a dance partner, even if she was doing it out of curiosity or after being egged on by friends. Charles stood behind him, no more or less observant to their private jibes at Danny's condition but far less tolerant of them.

They spent an hour at an assembly, Danny dancing two of the three dances. The middle one he did not know, and the third he barely knew enough not to step on the feet of his partner, whom he most graciously thanked.

He had some punch and walked away from it grinning. "The monastery in Japan was not so lively, and not full of female company," he replied to Charles' unasked question. From there they went to a club, where Danny gambled a very small amount over tiles, winning more of it than he expected, but generally losing most of the few pounds that he put down. When he could not find another partner willing to take the time it would take (what with him having to constantly rub his hands over the tiles to read them), they departed, and spent Charles' small winnings on a few pints.

Eventually someone propositioned them for a game of cassino, which they accepted (and on very small terms and with stern limits), and they removed to a back room, wiling away some time there. Charles was a worse gambler but had a clear advantage over Danny, and between the two of them, they were hardly robbed, but their partner departed and they were willing to call it a night when there was a knock on the door.

"Come." Charles was a little tipsy. Danny just put a hand on his cane.

"Charles!" To his horror, it was Paul. "I thought you would be alone."

"In the back of a tavern?"

"I was not thinking. Forgive me."

Paul moved to leave, but Charles figured the damage was done – or would be worse if things were not explained in some fashion – and gestured for him to stop. "Danny, this is my good friend, Mr. Watts. Mr. Watts, this is my cousin, Mr. Maddox."

Paul glanced nervously at Charles for approval before bowing. "How do you do?"

Danny nodded his head as an abbreviated bow in his general direction.

"I am sorry for disturbing you."

"Nonsense," Danny said. "We were just getting robbed by any vagrant with a few coins and willingness to play with me. Or little enough of a conscience."

Charles, caught between the two, let Paul speak. "I will play with you, but not for lack of conscience or home. What is your game?"

"Something with tiles. That way I have a chance."

Paul sat down and poured himself a drink from the bottle. There were still tiles on the table. "Forgive my intrusion. I was seeking some better company than that available at home. It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Maddox."

"You as well." He put a few coins up on the table. "If my pleasure-seeking inclination is keeping you from more pressing business – "

"The opposite. The business that is pressing is not what I seek." He began arranging the tiles, but his mind wasn't on it. Charles could see that, but hardly wanted to ask, in front of Danny at least. "Are you married, Mr. Maddox?"

"I have yet to join that esteemed community," Danny replied. "Something about my appearance seems to put women off."

"You've had offers," Charles said before he could stop himself. They were offers for flirtations, and he said it because he was a little drunk.

"To be my nursemaid more than my wife. I will not have a woman marry me out of pity." He took his share of tiles, counting them twice to be sure. "Why do you ask, Mr. Watts?"

Paul squirmed. "I am ashamed to assault you with my inconveniences, Mr. Maddox."

"Hardly. Is that not what drinking and gambling are pretenses for?"

"I suppose. Well, the truth of it is I am just escaping my family home, where my fiancée and her family invaded for several hours on the pretense of a meal."

"Paul's marriage was arranged," Charles explained. "For some reason he disagrees with this practice."

"Says he who is unattached and has been free of serious attachments via distant family for years," Paul said, with little sympathy. He was obviously hurting from whatever his fiancée said to him. They did not get along, but made the pretense of getting along in front of their family – or that was what happened in the past, according to Paul. "I remain in a state of imminent attachment to this woman for the same reasons anyone would – financial. Our futures are bound together by enough stocks and investments that even my solicitor cannot untangle them – not until we marry."

"I see."

The game began in earnest. Paul was eager to concentrate on the game, and away from his troubles. Charles stayed out of it, helping Danny when he needed help, and it was an even match until the door opened, though they had not given any permission. It was not the servant coming to refill their drinks.

"Mr. Watts," said the first man, as two entered from behind him and flanked him. He was tall, not too burly, but had a long mustache that was black and made him more menacing, especially with his tall hat still on.

Paul looked up. "I recognize you."

"Not enough to know my name."

"We were not introduced." He put his money back in his pocket and stood. "I saw you speaking to Evelyn. She said you were a solicitor."

"She is partially correct, I suppose, though it's a rather fancy thing to call me." He grinned, and it was not a nice grin. Charles was debating whether to rise, but Danny did not. He played with the tile in his hand. "I have done some ... solicitations on behalf of Miss Garrow, and discovered that you are as profitable to her as a husband as you are dead."

Now Charles did rise. "What is the meaning of – "

"And you must be Charles," the solicitor said. "Bingley, isn't it? The name sounds familiar. Must have made the papers for something else." He looked to Danny. "You – well, you have enough troubles, I think, without me recognizing you. You can go."

"You cannot kill me in front of witnesses," Paul said, trying to hide the tremble in his voice.

"I've no intentions of doing so. The magistrate will be happy enough to hang you – or maybe he'll just deport you, if you give up some names. It'll probably do good for his record to have another sodomy ring exposed – good for the papers. They like to see one every now and then."

"So you're here to arrest me?"

"Not unless you marry her – those are the terms, Mr. Watts, if you'd like to discuss them with your lover. Otherwise –" He grabbed Paul, who flew from his grasp and around the table.

The men drew guns, and the solicitor his, but a step forward and Danny was before him, his cane raised and pulled apart so that the sword inside was pressed against the solicitor's chest and throat. The other end of the sword prevented the attacker from raising the hand with the gun. "You should have raised it earlier," said Danny, his head bowed as it always was so that the solicitor's gaze was directly on Danny's forehead, not his face. "If your intentions were to attack us in such close quarters, you must account for the amount of time it takes to draw the gun." The man pressed just a touch, so blood was drawn by the sharp edge of the blade and he realized the position he was in. Danny did not waver. "You've left yourself very little room to move."

"I'll kill you."

"You won't make it that far." Danny's voice, normally so casual, was all authority. "This blade has cut through better things than you, sir. Let us leave and you can have your life. I think it is a fair bargain."

The man consider the option before dropping his gun. "Go."

Danny withdrew, sliding the sword back into the cane, but only long enough to use the cane to knock over the table in the direction of the other two thugs, delaying them as Paul kicked open the back door and the three of them fled onto the streets.

"This way!" Paul said, and Charles grabbed Danny's arm and led him down towards the docks, where they could find a corner to recollect. "Shit. Charles, I didn't mean – "

"You had no inkling?"

"Of course not!" Paul tempered his voice. "There was no way I would endanger you – or myself, or Mr. Maddox – I'm so sorry." He paused, breathing in the evening air, only slightly more bearable than the morning air because of the breeze and the proximity of the Thames. "She's never threatened to kill me. I never told her – I never told anyone. She must have had me followed."

Charles was not so sure how sympathetic he should have been, but his heart still went out to Paul. "She obviously did."

"If I go to jail, you might go with me. I wouldn't give your name except under torture, and they wouldn't do that, but she might have the evidence. I – " He looked down, collecting himself, and paced before he could face him again. "I must go to France."

"France?"

"Anywhere, really, that isn't here. Calais certainly should be safe. If not, Spain."

Charles swallowed. "You can't."

"I must."

"Your family will cut you off."

"I will manage."

"You will have nothing – I've heard of what goes on in those places – "

"Charles, I'm doing this because I have to, not because I want to. I cannot ask anything of you. I cannot ask for you to go to trial for me, or to leave with me – "

Charles gasped. So there it was. Paul was thinking it; he was thinking it, too. He was just waiting for it to be mentioned. Still, Paul did not ask, at least not in words. His expression betrayed him. "If I do not go, you will have nothing."

"You have something? How much do you have on you?"

_If you go, I will have nothing_, Charles thought. "You do not love me." That Danny was there was only a secondary thought to him. What could Danny not know now? How could Charles begin to deny it? "You should beg me to go."

"Charles, I do not ask because I do love you, and know you well enough to know you care more for your family – "

"I have done enough for my family." He had sacrificed everything, so many times, to remain a Bingley. He would regret it later, but now he could only think of Paul, the only man he'd truly loved since Guy, who himself was so mistreated by his own family. Could he go through that again? And what, marry someone like Miss Emerson – pleasant enough, but lacking all the passion that made his life worthwhile, fleeting as it could be? "I love my family, but ..." He bit his lip. "When do you intend to leave?"

"Now. Tonight. As soon as I can find a ship that will take me. I have some funds tied up where they don't know about it."

"How much?"

"100 pounds, maybe by now."

Not nearly enough, even to begin a proper life in France, or wherever he ended up. "Let me speak to my cousin."

Paul nodded and stepped away. Danny was sitting on the steps leading up to the entrance to a closed office, his cane so inauspiciously held in one hand and the end resting on his shoe. "So. You are to go abroad again, then?"

"You knew?"

"I had suspicions, but they were not confirmed." Danny's voice was so even, so calm. "I have on me only a few pounds."

"That was not what I meant to ask – "

He stood, as if to face Charles, though his head, as usual, was pointed more to Charles' chest. He was also a bit shorter, which didn't help. "You mean to ask my advice, and I cannot make this decision for you. It will have consequences for the rest of your life, but so will staying here and leaving him to an uncertain fate. It is too difficult for me to begin to know your pain."

Charles was speechless.

Danny only smiled at his silence. "You are speaking to a former Japanese monk, Charles. You cannot expect me to be anything but unusual. Now, limited as my understanding of finances is, if you sign over control of your personal assets to me, I can liquidate them and have them sent to you before anyone is the wiser. And how much blame can they heap upon me? They will be much harder on you, and you will be gone."

"Daniel – "

Danny held out his hand, for Charles to take it. "They will forgive you, I think, in time. And if you write some very apologetic letters. Acceptance is too much to ask, but they are good Christians and they are your family, so forgiveness is not. Besides, I think Edmund could use the Kirkland inheritance more than he would admit."

He choked on his words before he spoke them. "Let me think. Let us find a ship for Paul."

"Yes."

They did not speak. There was too much to say that was too easily said in their own minds, knowing their would be no answers. They found cheap passage to France, that would take one or two passengers to the coast. Between them all, if they sold their watches and jewelry, they had maybe thirty pounds.

"For me there is no decision," Paul said, and shook Danny's hand. "I cannot thank you enough. I can ask you how you did it."

"You were present."

"But how did you know – "

Danny shrugged. "I had a good teacher. Good luck, Mr. Watts."

"And the same to you, Mr. Maddox."

Paul turned to Charles, who embraced him. "I cannot let you go."

"Then you must come with me."

Charles separated only long enough to wipe his tears. "I will regret it, either way."

"I already regret asking you, and forcing this on you, but I will do what I can to make it worth your while."

The captain of the ship had some paper. Charles, with Paul as witness, signed over partial control of his personal accounts, listing their places and numbers, to Daniel Maddox Jr. The captain had wax, but he had no seal, so Charles pressed his thumb into the hot wax, biting his lip so hard as to almost draw blood until it took hold, and he could hand the document to Danny. Hopefully – possibly with the right bribes at the bank the next day – the document would hold up. "I will write."

"I know."

"I will write my location to you, and to everyone else; will you forward my letters?"

"Of course."

He grabbed Danny and hugged him so hard it hurt. "I cannot thank you for your kindness."

"It is not required. You are family."

Charles swallowed a sob, tugged one last time on his cousin, and released him before stepping down onto the boat. "Goodbye, Danny."

"Goodbye, Charles." He learned over the dock, and handed him what looked like a pocket watch. It opened to reveal a compass instead. "Take this for your travels."

"May I ask – why do you have a compass?" After all, the needle was beneath glass. Danny could not make any use of it himself.

"Because it has never led me astray," he said, and backed away so the boat could pull out, away from the docks and into the mist that enveloped the harbor and obscured the full blackness of night.

... Next Chapter - Danny's Ordeal


	26. Danny’s Ordeal

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note:** Those of you who have had problems getting your account on my forums, you now can! I finally got the activation thing fixed so I will activate you if you answer the question quickly. The form accepts "Darcy" or "Bennet."

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 26 – Danny's Ordeal

Seizing and liquidating all of Charles Bingley the Third's private assets was not an easy task for anyone, especially in such a short time span. Danny did not have to give an excuse when he stayed the night at the Bingley house, which was always open to him, but he did have to explain why he was calling both Charles' solicitor and his own to aid him. He also dictated one brief message to go to Eliza's home in Sussex. That brief message was more difficult, emotionally, than the rest of the taxing day ahead of him, which involved massive financial decisions the likes of which he'd never had to deal with. He sat with tea for lunch, his stomach a bit unsettled, and meditated in his room until they resumed in the afternoon, and the first check was written to cash at the bank – a task, fortunately, that the solicitor could perform on Danny's behalf, as he could not sign his name himself and have it stand, only make his mark.

He ordered a light dinner of rice and fish for himself, but a grander meal for the Turners, who arrived after he'd eaten and despite himself, was beginning to doze in the armchair. "Danny!"

He did not have time to bow before she embraced him. "Eliza."

Eliza Turner (nee Bingley) was not alone. There was a child crying, her son Elliot, and Danny heard the voice of Matthew Turner. "Hello, Mr. Maddox."

"Mr. Turner. I've taken the liberty of arranging for your dinner." He held his hand out, and Eliza guided it to Elliot's cheek so he could stroke it. Elliot, being held most likely by his father, squealed before disappearing to the Nursery. "There's been no one else – "

"Is it true?"

Danny's letter, if properly written as he dictated it, said only that Charles left for the Continent with his friend Paul. "It is. I was right there."

"And you did not stop it." Eliza sounded angrier than she'd ever been.

"He's a grown man. It was not my place." Danny held his cane protectively anyway. It was instinctual. "He is in love."

"Did you know?"

So she knew. He suspected she did – how could Charles keep this from his twin sister? "I did not. Please sit and rest from the road and I will explain."

"I don't want you to explain!" Eliza shouted, and he could hear the tears. "I want my brother."

He bowed his head lower than usual. "I cannot provide him for you."

She grabbed him, and shook him, and he did not resist, waiting for Matthew to pull her off and take her in his arms as she sobbed, as a proper husband should. Matthew always struck Danny as a kind, loving man. "He's not coming back, is he?" she asked.

"I don't know if he can. At the moment, he has left me in charge of liquidating his assets before his father freezes them."

Eliza wailed at the news, and Matthew whispered to her. However he comforted his wife was none of Danny's business. He began the slow journey to the dining room, to encourage them to do the same. The servant poured him fresh tea as they entered behind him, Eliza sitting on one side and her husband beyond her somewhere.

She put a hand over Danny's. "I thought he was past this."

"That I cannot say, other than whatever this is, evidence points to otherwise," Danny said. "Last night, we went out for a bit of fun, and I danced at an assembly, and we gambled – very small amounts, for fun, nothing serious – and this man came in, looking for Charles. His name was Paul Watts." When she did not speak, he assumed he could continue. "Mr. Watts was very polite, and played a game with me, though he seemed very distressed over his marital arrangements. He is on very bad terms with his fiancée, over money, and he had explained some portion of what was obviously a larger story when some men entered and threatened him and Charles with exposure and death. Until this time I had no inkling of it, at least with no time to think it through, but to be short, the man whose name I never learned had been sent by Mr. Watt's fiancée. She did not want to marry him, but when she discovered he would provide her with the same financial compensation of marriage if he were a dead man, she sent these thugs after him – to kill him or have him arrested, I know not. Only that we fled, and Mr. Watts realized that if he stayed, he would go to jail, and likely with him, Charles. So he concluded he had to leave, with whatever money was on the three of us. He found a boat that would take him across the channel, and Charles decided to go with him."

"Did he give a reason?"

"You will not like it."

"He was in love." She gasped, and Danny patted her hand. "He told you?"

"He made it obvious, even if he had not. He did feel so terrible about the decision, because of you, and me, and the family. He did not want us to suffer. Mr. Watts already knew that, and made reference to it while I was still figuring it out. He does not know yet, where they will go, but he gave me a letter to access his funds, and he will write from France or Spain – wherever they find safe harbor."

"And you did it?"

"I took the paper, and I've begun the process. It will take me several days, at least."

"This Mr. Watts, you saw – " Matthew Turner stopped himself. "I'm sorry. I was going to ask you to describe him."

"Again, I cannot supply you with the information you need." Danny turned to Eliza. "Wherever he is, he is safer than he would have been, staying in England. Even if he stayed and denied everything, he still might have faced charges, depending on how desperate the Watts family was to protect their wayward son with bribery."

"He was going to a doctor," Eliza cried. "This is Uncle Maddox's fault! He sent him there."

"What?"

"Your father – Charles went to Geoffrey and Geoffrey went to Uncle Maddox, before Emily's wedding, and asked for the name of a doctor. And he gave him one. A man in Lancaster."

Danny could not imagine it. Or could he? His father was not without his contacts. "I do not believe it is a medical condition, or would they not have cured it long ago?"

"Do not bother me with the hypothetical while my brother is gone! Gone!" She collected herself, albeit slowly.

"Elizabeth, you must eat," her husband said gently. "Please."

"That I could speak to him – "

"Elizabeth."

"That I could _wring his neck_."

"Elizabeth, I beg of you." There was a small insistence in Mr. Turner's voice. "Do not make yourself ill."

She did eat, though it took what seemed like a long time before Mr. Turner was satisfied, and stood. "I am sorry, for my behavior. To you, at least. To my brother, I will withhold comment, but to you – " She broke off. "You are not ashamed?"

"Ashamed of what?"

"Ashamed to be his cousin. I suppose it is not in question, with all that you are doing for him, things he should be staying and doing himself, but I must ask it all the same."

"He needed my help last night and he needs it now," Danny replied. "That is not in question. The reason is not relevant to me."

"You wrote - "

"I dictated to Georgie and Geoffrey, but they are in Lancashire. For everyone else, I figured I would await your counsel. Forgive me."

Eliza pulled him up and hugged him. "You do not need to be forgiven. You are all goodness. Thank you, Danny."

Too tired to explain it was not necessary, he merely said, "You are welcome."

She bid her goodnights and went up with Mr. Turner. Danny returned to the study to be assured that everything was finished for the night, at least in his capacity to do, and began to unbutton his coat as he approached the stairs. Before the servant took his arm, he heard another voice. "Let me."

It was Matthew Turner. He came back down the stairs to aid Danny up. The stairs always gave him the most trouble. "Thank you."

"I do not want my wife to make herself sick," Matthew explained.

"Oh." Danny added, "How far is she along?"

"Two months, at most. Still though – "

"I understand. It is a great shock, though less so than if she had not known at all."

"She told me on the way here. She said it was the only reason he would leave again, with no forewarning. I did not know of his leanings."

"Nor did I. However it came out, it was among siblings, and it could not have been easy for him. Perhaps it is why he was in Edmund's poor favor for so long, with no reason given."

"Perhaps." Matthew knew less, of course, but he knew the brothers didn't get along like brothers all of the time. He was married to their sister. He attended family functions. "He was courting someone, was he not?"

"It ended. I suppose now we know why."

"Yes." They reached the top of the stairs, and Danny put a hand out to find the wall. "I would wish to tell my sister, and George, in the morning."

"That is most fitting, I think, to hear it from you." And Matthew was relieved not to have to do it himself. "Hopefully the ultimate crisis is averted, in that it will not become public knowledge." He chuckled. "Though, the only unmarried Bingley, excluding Charles, would now be Edmund, who also will be engaged as soon as it is proper. Had this happened two months ago, perhaps we would not have been so lucky."

"Yes." Matthew was grasping at straws to see it that way, but then again, they both were. "Tomorrow, I will help you in whatever capacity I can – after being with Eliza, of course."

"Of course."

"I cannot imagine Mr. Bingley being the sort of man to disinherit a son and heir – but this is the reason to, is it not? Is there a worse crime?"

"I know not, but I think with enough time, Uncle Bingley will find some reason to forgive him of it, even if not on paper. I do not think he is a man who can hold hatred like that in his heart for very long."

"You know him better than I, but I think so, too." He probably bowed. "Goodnight, Daniel."

Danny nodded. "Goodnight, Matthew."

He could almost hear Matthew smile, and then Danny passed into his own room, and the special darkness that only sleep could offer him.

*******************************************

The following morning brought a reunion of the Turner siblings, as Dr. George and Cynthia Wickham arrived, bringing their daughter Emma, who sat in Danny's lap as he told the story again, this time to a more shocked and less emotional obvious, at least from what he could tell. George took the news as he expected him to – calmly, and without betraying his surprise except in the undercurrent of his voice. Still, he did not sound all that surprised. "You said he was going to a doctor?"

"Yes. I don't know who."

"It's not treatable," George said. "At least as far as I know."

But the more pressing matter – at least for George – was that Eliza was ill, and still in bed. He visited her, and informed her husband it was a combination of stress and her condition, but that she was in no real danger, as she was not hysterical and did not have a fever.

"She's inconsolable," Matthew admitted.

"She feels as though she's lost her brother," George said. "When he proves himself alive, and probably extremely apologetic in his letters, she will improve."

The Bingley house did seem very empty without a master, even though one was not required, especially with Eliza there. Charles left in the night, not taking a single thing that wasn't on him when he left the house that evening for dancing and cards, and his presence was still very much in evidence in the study. The place was a mess, mainly because there were two solicitors going through it, working together with Danny to get as much cash freed as possible. When George saw the spectacle, he said, "He is being very cautious. He does not have to worry."

"If I were in his position, I would not sleep so easily."

"I do not think he slept easily before, if he abandoned his life here so quickly," George replied, without a hint of disdain. "I am saying that, in the unlikely event that Uncle Bingley does cut him off, he is not without resources. From me."

Danny just nodded. He did not know what else was appropriate.

*******************************************

"Did you know?" was Cynthia's first question as George entered the Nursery that evening, joining her as she put Emma to bed. He preferred to rock his daughter to sleep himself when he was available to do so. Emma lifted her arms when she saw him and he did not disappoint her, letting her clutch his tie as he rocked back and forth.

"I did not. We roomed a year together in college, with Geoffrey, but whether he was so inclined then, he gave no indication. And once I was a Fellow, my mind was elsewhere." He smiled at Emma, who picked at his whiskers, and kissed her little cheek. "He did run off to Italy before. Twice, I believe, and was dragged back by his sister. I confess I did not see further into it, but I don't suppose he would have wanted me to."

"Have you ever treated a – well," she looked at Emma, even if she was too young to understand her words. That was enough of an indication.

"No. It's sort of a specialty I don't care to go into," he said, lowering his voice as his daughter stopped squirming so much and rested her head on his shoulder. He paced in silence for a time, and when Emma was finally asleep, Cynthia kissed her and set her right in her crib.

They retired to their bedchamber, and dismissed the servants as quickly as they could so they could talk in privacy. "I don't envy him," George said. "I don't envy anyone in the family, however much or little they will be surprised. Especially Aunt Bingley."

As always, she was observant. "You do not think his father will cut him off."

"He will disinherit him, at least in his will. He will have to, but that is only on paper, and at the reading of his will. There may be some questions that force Uncle Bingley to find a reason to financially distance the family from Charles, but knowing Uncle Bingley, it will pain him to do so. But no, I cannot imagine he has it in him. Perhaps immediately he will consider the idea, but it will fade in time. Charles may return."

"If it gets out – "

"Charles can never return – to reside, certainly, in England. To visit, perhaps. The thought of never seeing him again would be – " And he stopped, because the idea of finishing that sentence was enough.

Cynthia put her arms around him. "Charles cared very much for his family, did he not?"

How quickly had they had gone to the past, as if he was dead? But it was a natural reaction. "He and Eliza were inseparable as children. And he was always like his father, the one with the kindest heart. He was eager to see the union of your brother and his sister. He told me once he knew Matthew would be good to her, and he would accept nothing less for his sister."

"I regret I did not know him better."

"Well," George said, "maybe there will be time."

*******************************************

Back at the Bingley house, the Turners and Mr. Maddox had a later guest. She arrived when they were relaxing after dinner, accompanied by a servant and very imposing. "I'm told you know Mr. Watts," she said to Danny, who did not bother to look up. "My name is Miss Garrow. May we have privacy?"

"Danny?" Eliza said, not needing to add anything further. He nodded, and listened to them leave – not to go far, no doubt, but to the next room, where there was a good window that secretly opened for hearing everything in the piano room.

Danny did stand, and bowed, though he had no idea where she was at this point. "Miss Garrow. I would welcome you to the home, but it isn't mine. I am Mr. Maddox, the nephew of the owner of this house." Though Danny did not feel as though he was in any physical danger, he kept one hand on his cane anyway, even as he sat. "What can I do for you?"

"Where is Paul?"

He shrugged. "I have no idea. The Continent, most likely."

"When you last saw him – " She made the mistake, and he didn't bother to flinch. "When you last _heard_ him – "

"Miss Garrow, I have very little to hide from you. I did not know Mr. Watts until the night I met him, which I'm sure is the night in question, when he fled England after being attacked by your solicitor. I knew nothing about his connection to my cousin, and I could not tell you much about him now, though I sense you are not here for any kind of description. I do not know his whereabouts, though my suspicions are France and not Ireland or Scotland, considering he boarded a ship in that direction."

"Your cousin left with him?"

"Yes." Danny saw no reason to deny it. "Having his life threatened was enough to help him form that decision."

She seated herself, or it sounded like it. "I heard you attacked my ... solicitor, but I do not believe it now."

"You may believe whatever you wish."

"I had Paul followed for some time. I will not deny this, either, for the sake of expediency. I know all about your cousin, enough to ruin your family."

"And yours as well, I would understand, by association."

She was quick, her words rapid and short. "My family is not interested in scandal."

"I am not the one to make the decision, but I think I can safely say my family would agree."

"If Paul is willing to declare himself dead, I will have what I want and he will be left alone."

Danny snickered. "I was not aware one could declare themselves dead and have it stand in court."

"You know very well what I mean." She had no patience for him, though he had patience for her. "We will declare him dead in a boating accident while traveling, and he will change his name and not challenge it. The papers are already drawn up. And I suppose there will be some show of mourning on my part. He will not receive two pence from his parents for his troubles, but he knows he doesn't deserve it. All we require is his agreement and this will be the end of our troubles."

And the beginning of Paul Watts' troubles, provided that Charles did not support him. She was not interested in that and Danny did not bring it up. "My cousin said he will write, and I will have this information sent on to him, and from there to your former fiancé. Your card?" He opened his hand, and she put one in it. "Thank you."

Miss Garrow stood, and so did he. He bowed, "Good evening."

She did not say another word, but the sounds of her leaving the house were enough for him to sigh in relief, and collapse into the armchair.

"It's me," Eliza said, returned, as she took the card out of his hand. "Miss Evelyn Garrow. What a whore."

He could not hold back his laughter. "Eliza, you surprise me."

"She ruined Charles' life! What else do you want me to call her? Chit hardly satisfies. But it was good news, in a way."

"Yes." He was still laughing, and she scolded him, and he only said, "I am glad to see you are somewhat recovered, at least enough to scold a blind man."

"Blind man," Matthew Turner said. "What was this nonsense about you attacking the solicitor?"

"Oh you know me," Danny said, and with his thumb, snapped open his cane so that the beginning of the blade hidden inside showed. "I couldn't harm a flea. Clearly."

"Mad," Matthew said, to Eliza. "Your whole family is mad. Every last one of them."

She sounded like she was smiling. "I find myself unable to deny it."

... Next Chapter - Society's Demands


	27. Society's Demands

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note:** Those of you who have had problems getting your account on my forums, you now can! I finally got the activation thing fixed so I will activate you if you answer the question quickly. The form accepts "Darcy" or "Bennet."

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 27 – Society's Demands

As Geoffrey left the breakfast table, he found Georgie already standing in his study with the mail. Her flushed expression and the way she gripped the letter so hard it was ready to come apart made him want to flee, but instead he stood where he was. "What have I done?"

She looked up, just a bit relieved at his presence. "Shut the door."

He did so, and he played with the latch for emphasis, to assure her that it was well and truly closed from their children or their guests, the Maddoxes and Miss Richmond. By the time he inched back, her eyes were also wet. "Charles is gone."

"He's – where is he?"

"He left – with his lover. To avoid exposure." She passed Geoffrey the message, in a hand he didn't recognize, but it was too crumbled for him to read much. "He was out with Danny and he ran into this man – Paul – and they had to leave. They were threatened. He's gone to France and he will write us." As he took the letter, she balled her fist and beat it limply – for Georgiana – against his chest. "He left us, that bastard! He's gone!"

Geoffrey scanned the letter, written in a servant's hand and dictated by Danny Maddox.

_To Georgiana and Geoffrey_

_I regret to be the bearer of the message that Charles has left for France. Last night during our evening's entertainment we met his friend Paul, and then encountered some friends who were not so friendly, and the resulting feeling was that Charles and his friend should retire to the Continent. He says he loves you and will write you as soon as he is settled._

_Daniel Maddox Junior_

_Dictated but not read._

Georgie was sobbing into his jacket. "What are we going to do?" At least she had stopped hitting him. "I still had hope. I wanted him to be happy here."

"He certainly tried." He'd tried a lot of other things, too, as Geoffrey so vividly called. This was not the worst of them. "But if he was left with no other choice – "

"There's always a choice!"

"Sometimes there is not." He took her fist, and pulled the fingers apart to kiss them. "He is not gone. He is just not as physically present. He is in France, which is not so far, and he will write us."

"How can you be so calm? You're not mad at him?"

"I assure you, if it brings you comfort, that I am very mad at him, for what he's done to you now," Geoffrey said, "to make you so angry. He wouldn't do it willingly – not in front of you, anyway, or within throwing distance."

"I have to tell Eliza. No, Danny's probably told her. He's closer. Why does he have to do all this? What did he do to deserve it? I have to go to London. No! I have to go to Derbyshire! What if my father hears first? What about our guests? What are we going to tell them?"

"Everything, I imagine. It's unavoidable. They'll find out later and know we were needlessly holding back. And your father has already insisted that Edmund marry Miss Richmond, so she might as well know the family secret." He held her head up so she could look him in the eyes. "No more secrets. At least we have that. And when this all settles, Charles will live in France and visit or come home or whatnot, but he is not dead and gone, he is just being Charles and we must endure it."

She was so exposed in her expression. "How can you be so brave?"

"Because I have not yet had time to ponder what my father is going to say about all this."

*******************************************

Georgie went upstairs to clean herself up after they decided a plan of action. Geoffrey summoned Frederick into the room, and his guest was quickly able to detect the new level of somberness in the house from the expression that greeted him.

Frederick did not quip. "What has happened?"

"Please, do not make a joke of this. At least not in front of Georgie, or any Bingley." He leaned against the desk. He was so tired already, and it was just the beginning of it. "Danny wrote us. Charles has fled to the Continent with his ... lover." He added, "No jokes."

"Why would I – "

"His lover's name is Paul."

The amount of expressions that passed over Frederick's face – not all of them savory – Geoffrey could not count on a single hand. He looked down at his feet, around at the study, anything to pass the time while he calculated his response. "So I assume it will be a long time before this stops being a serious matter?"

"Yes."

"I'll wait." Frederick crossed his arms, very serious about it. "What else?"

"That's all I know, really. I knew before – I found out a few years ago. Obviously he kept it to himself best he could, and he did intend to marry. Apparently there was some risk of exposure for both of them – I suppose they might have gone to the trial – and so they fled instead. Danny happened to be there, so Charles charged him with telling us while he finds somewhere to settle."

"Do you want me to tell my wife?"

"Georgie said she wants to do it, unless you think it's better – "

"She can do the situation more dignity," he agreed. His expression was surprisingly meek. "And Miss Richmond?"

"Georgie."

He nodded. "Well Edmund would do best to marry her now, in case there is a scandal – on top of theirs." Frederick considered the matter. "Is this why – "

"Yes. This is why Charles and Edmund had fallen out for so long. Edmund knew ahead of all of us. Eventually they made peace, but it wasn't until Charles sheltered him during the divorce that they could really speak to one another."

"But he didn't expose him? To us I mean."

"No. Edmund was as ashamed as Charles was."

Frederick squirmed. "How was my brother involved?"

"Nothing sordid. He was out with Charles gambling or something when they ran into trouble. The rest of the details, I'm sure you can acquire from him in person when you see him next."

"Yes. It's not the thing to be dictated." But there was no doubt that Danny was involved in this sort of thing. Though reserved, Danny actively sought out women, and was happy to dance with them and even put up with their inappropriate questions about his condition. He talked of being married, picky as he was.

The point was, he was no sodomite.

"I will not impose upon your hospitality any longer," Frederick said.

"You don't have to rush," Geoffrey replied. "We do enjoy your company, and you may stay even though I think we will be gone as soon as it's determined where we should go – Derbyshire or Town. That may require a few days."

"All the same. I want to see Danny – but thank you. And thank you for telling me."

Geoffrey nodded.

"I'll tell Stewart, if he asks, that Cousin Charles has gone to France. He won't ask more than that. Like me, his attention span can be limited."

"We should have our stories straight."

"Yes."

"Thank you." He bowed, and Frederick left, no doubt to seek out his wife or avoid seeing her until she heard the news.

*******************************************

"No! You cannot mean it!"

"I can," Georgie said, clinging to her shawl in her dressing room. She did not feel so strong now. She was even a little afraid of her two visitors, despite calling them in herself. She was not completely composed, but on the verge of tears. At least she was not lost in them. "I knew, I confess, a few years ago, but he was going to a doctor, and he was trying to reform. He wanted to stay in England. He didn't want to disappoint us." There was no reason to tell either of them about Italy. They were family not by blood and only one of them by marriage.

"You do not know Charles," Lady Heather said to Julia Richmond, "but he is one of the kindest men I have ever met. Georgie even tried to match us together when he was in University – "

"Oh G-d, don't remind me – "

" – and he was utterly sweet whenever we were together, which we only were so that Georgie and Geoffrey could have a moment alone during their engagement. But my real interest was Frederick, who was also kind to me – but it didn't come as naturally to him with other women, I learned later. I was special to him. Charles, he thought everyone special. I just cannot imagine it."

"He and Edmund fell out over it," Georgie added, for Julia's sake. "We did not know why at the time that they stopped speaking, but we found out and they eventually made peace with it." Now she realized, "If he really does stay, and admit everything, he cannot inherit. Edmund might get Kirkland. It depends on what Papa puts in his will."

"I was not thinking of that," Julia said defensively.

"I apologize. I did not mean to insinuate. I do not know what I mean. My brother – he's gone." And when Georgie cried, this time it was Heather who held her, and not Geoffrey, but it did the job.

*******************************************

There were arrangements to be made, but few could be made with so little information, and they went back and forth about where they would go and who they would talk to. And there were the children, serving as a pleasant distraction, and Mala to be a not-so-pleasant distraction when they finally found her, hiding beneath the bed in Geoffrey's unused master bedchamber with the piece of rug still between her teeth.

"Mala no! No," Alison pleaded, but the hound just looked back up at her. "No, you'll get in trouble."

"Trouble," Brian repeated. "Mala trouble." He grinned and looked up at his approaching parents. "Mama trouble."

"Not today she isn't," Geoffrey said, lifting up his younger son. "Yet." He carried Brian off, leaving Georgie to Mala and Alison.

Alison knelt down beside Mala, who abandoned the torn carpet and rushed into her arms. "Why is everyone leaving?"

"There's been a surprise," Georgie said. "Your Uncle Charles has gone to live in France."

"Live in France?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"I don't know."

"Will he still send me presents?"

She smiled. "Undoubtedly."

Alison stood up, carrying the dog, and faced her mother. "Did he do something wrong? You were talking like he did."

"You know how I feel about eavesdropping."

"I wasn't! I just heard. The hallways are loud."

They weren't being quiet about it. About the details, yes, but about the emergency, no. And Alison had a right to know _something_. "Charles did get into some trouble – and it wasn't his fault, but it happened – and he's gone to France. Sometimes if people leave, people forget they've done wrong and they can return."

"Isn't that running away?"

It was, and that was the problem. "It's different if you do it to your family or you do it because society says you have to. He didn't leave because he was afraid we would be mad at him, but that people we don't know would be mad at him. He would never willingly leave you. He loves you very much."

"I don't understand."

"Society is different from family. And sometimes society is wrong, but you still have to play by their rules – most of the time."

"But not all of the time."

"No." Georgie kissed her. "I know, it's very confusing. I hardly understand it myself. They're someone else's rules, but you have to play by them sometimes. So Charles went to France, and he'll come visit as soon as he can."

Alison hugged her puppy. "I don't like _society_."

She winked. "I couldn't agree with you more."

*******************************************

The next day, before anyone could officially begin to put their trunks up on the carriages, a letter arrived from Edmund, express.

_If you do not know why I am writing you should find out. I went straight to Town when I heard the news, only to learn (_crossed out_ 'the bastard') Charles sent a letter to our parents first, and it reached them while I was gone. I have returned now. Mother is not well._

_Edmund _

The Maddoxes decided to return to Town anyway, and assist Danny if he needed assistance, and not to invade Derbyshire until they were called. Julia went with the Darcys to Derbyshire, her main thought of seeing Edmund in his distress.

It was not Edmund who greeted the carriage that brought them to Kirkland. Charles Bingley II, looking very old and grey – and tired – managed a smile for his daughter, then almost collapsed onto her when she embraced him. "Papa." He laid his head on hers and said nothing.

"Uncle Bingley," Geoffrey bowed. His uncle did acknowledge his presence, but he was so distant, so lost, as if he was just wandering around his own property, waiting for the arrival of help. "I am sorry for the circumstances, but may I present Miss Richmond?"

Bingley just nodded, and tipped his head to Julia. He looked down at Georgie, who was waiting for him so eagerly to say, "Your mother is in her room. Elizabeth is with her." He almost pushed her away, his way of telling her to go, and she curtseyed and did. The children would go on to Pemberley.

It first occurred to Geoffrey that he did not know which Elizabeth his uncle meant. "Are Eliza and Mr. Turner – "

"They are on their way from Town," Bingley said. He scratched his head. "Edmund." He was so utterly lost. He put his arms on Geoffrey's shoulders and said, "Your father has been so good to me. Thank him for his kindness."

Geoffrey didn't understand, but he only said, "I will." Why would his father be cruel? He knew him better than that.

Fortunately for Miss Richmond, Edmund appeared, and welcomed her into his arms. Like his father, he was tired. His face lacked all the indignation filled in his letter, as if it was spent already. "I missed you," he mumbled, mostly into her hair.

Bingley pulled Geoffrey in, to give the couple privacy. He must have gone truly insane.

"How is Aunt Bingley?"

"She's not sick – she's just unwell. That's what the doctor said. She needs rest. He said, no strain on her heart. I could not tell him it was broken, I gave her a son that broke it ..." He shook his head. "Your father is in the library."

That was his signal to leave Bingley and go to his father, as much as he wanted to stay and hear more and maybe say some words of comfort. But he thought of no reason to contradict the order, and went to the library, full of Asian books and knickknacks and expensive porcelain from China and idols from India. His father rose to greet him.

"We came as soon as we heard," Geoffrey said, not clarifying that he meant of their distress. "Father." He bowed. His father sat back down, and he took the seat beside Darcy. "Georgiana is – "

" – with Jane, I saw." His father still had strength in his voice when Bingley had none, but it was muted by sadness. "I saw her run up the stairs. You know, she's like her mother, I'm told. Mrs. Bennet would go into a horrible spell when some misfortune came along, like a daughter going missing, only she would complain bitterly, whereas, Mrs. Bingley being the more graceful of the daughters, simply read the letter and passed out cold. She was very quickly revived. The letter was polite and apologetic. Elizabeth read it."

Geoffrey took a drink, as there were glasses and a bottle of whiskey on the table between them. He noticed his father's glass was mostly empty, with only a little on the bottom.

"When I was in college, I learned to look the other way at the excesses of my peers," Darcy said. "Too much, perhaps. Definitely with Wickham, but he was gone soon enough, after that bit with the Head's daughter. And I'd gone to Eton, so little could truly surprise me. So used to this condition of turning away from my problems and the actions of other people, should they possibly influence me, I looked away from Charles. In that respect I am a very weak man, in that I could not face it, even when I saw him in that terrible depression after college, and his friend died. I knew his father, of all things, ran into him while he was still in black for his son. Mr. Peterson. We were at University together – a terrible drunk but a good fencer. He had a nasty temper even then." He laughed, but it was a sick, sad laugh of a man with a drink in him to raise his courage. "All my life, the most damage I think I've done is to people I meant to protect by hiding them from the danger before them. So I did not tell Bingley. I did not even tell your mother. I do not think I really told myself." He grumbled. "Maybe the shock would have not been so bad, had I not been so foolish."

"I didn't tell anyone."

"You had reason to. Did you really ask Dr. Maddox on his behalf for a reference? He wrote that to someone, I think it was your mother. I've gotten some of the letters I've overheard bits of mixed up with my own."

Geoffrey looked down. "I did."

"That was braver than anything I did."

"It didn't work."

His father had a tone of voice he rarely used when speaking to Geoffrey, and Geoffrey suspected few people ever heard it. It was Darcy giving someone information in confidence, and very tone of it expressed that, even if it was not said outright. "I have some experience in the world of trying to shoo away bad thoughts and inner demons, and I know they cannot be willed away, much you might try. The best you can do is bottle them up, and when they run so utterly contrary to your interests as a human being and Christian man – well, that is beyond my imagination. His turmoil is therefore understandable, and the methods he took to cleanse himself of his own feelings unquestionably brutal. And in the end, when he said in his letter to me that the decision he made to abandon us was for our good, and not his own, I feel I must believe him, because even if he is in love, he still must be terribly lonely."

Darcy went silent for awhile. Geoffrey sipped his whiskey, and let it be, but when there were no further interruptions, he felt compelled to say something. "Uncle Bingley told me to tell you how grateful he was."

"He knows I would not reprimand him, and he has nothing to be grateful for on that front. He is just not rational now, in the face of such a loss. Even if Charles lives afar and maintains contact, even visits, he is gone from the family. If there is a Charles the Fourth he will not be the son of Charles the Third. History will pass him by. Even Bingley, who admits no noble ancestry, still feels the pressure to make a noble name for the family, long after he has done it. He has been raised to create a noble line of Bingleys, and he feels that he has failed. When Mrs. Bingley is better, I will remind him that my father was only Mr. Darcy of Pemberley because his brother Gregory was mad and passed over. There will be time for that." He finished the dregs of his glass. "Let us speak of something else for a moment. How are my grandchildren?"

"On their way to Pemberley – or probably there, as we speak. And they are well. They've brought the dog. We tried to convince them to leave her at Lancashire to be trained, but not knowing when we would return, we could not refuse their request to bring her."

"A girl?"

Geoffrey blushed. "My mistake at the shop. Still a noble hound, a solid breed. Very lively and intelligent."

"Disobedient?"

"No more so than a puppy her age."

"You gave her a proper name of course."

"Mala. After an Oriental goddess."

His father gestured for Geoffrey to refill his glass. "Of course."

*******************************************

Whatever protestations Georgie heard from the maid (who was new enough not to know not to tell her something like that) she ignored, and entered her mother's chambers. "Mama." She curtseyed. "Aunt Darcy."

The maid was not correct. Her mother was not asleep, merely in bed. Her pallor was sickly, but there was no doctor and no women with cold towels for her head, though there was a bruise on it. Her Aunt Darcy sat by her side, rising only to make way so her mother could greet her. "Georgie. Oh, you've come. I thought it would take longer."

"No, I'm here." She kissed her mother on the cheek and took up Elizabeth's old position. "We've just arrived. The children have gone to Pemberley, and Miss Richmond is with Edmund and Papa. We came as soon as we could."

"I was shocked," Jane said. "I remember reading the letter, and thinking about him as an infant, when your father held Eliza and I held Charles and the sun came up – and then I don't know, but I was out for a short while and your father was shaking me and he was crying. And he would have called every doctor in England had the Darcys not stopped him." She put a hand over Georgie's arm. "Every time I wake, I think of that morning. It was Christmas, of course. I was in labor Christmas Eve, and your father was drinking himself nearly to death in the study. Dr. Maddox and Lizzy delivered them both, and I slept a little when they brought Charles up to see his children, and the sun came right through that window – " She pointed. "And I think I'm there again, holding little Charles, and your father holding Eliza, and you in your cradle in the Nursery with Geoffrey. Then I look at my hands. Look at them, all old and wrinkled. And Eliza is a mother now and Charles is gone."

"Mama – "

"I know he is not so far gone, it's only France, and if only it was just that, another trip abroad, avoiding what little duties he has, and not something more terrible. Why does he have to write and apologize to me? Is it because he can't remember when he cried every time we tried to separate him from his sister? The nurse wouldn't make it out of the room with her and he would start. Someone like that doesn't have to apologize. He has to explain himself, but I'm not mad. I can't be mad at my baby." If she had more, it was lost in sobs, and Elizabeth took her other hand as she wailed. "I love him and I want him home! How stupid can he be?"

"He can be very stupid," Georgie said. "I will write him and tell him."

"You will beg him but he will not come. He said so. He cannot. He thinks he is tainted. He thinks he is a monster. What will become of him? What will happen to my baby?"

"He will come home," Elizabeth said. "He left for the good of the family, because he thought it was the right thing to do."

"He was wrong! Lizzy, tell him he's wrong."

"We will let him know," she said, even though he would not be coming home – not as soon as they wanted him home, anyway. Eventually Jane Bingley wore herself out, and after drinking and eating a little after practically being force-fed by the combined forces of her sister and daughter, she slept.

Georgie stepped into the hallway, only to discover it was dark. Was the day gone already? "Aunt Darcy. I'm so sorry I wasn't here."

"Your uncle was, and that was enough. She hit her head, but not seriously. It could have been much worse." If Elizabeth had slept in the past few days, it was not well. "My nephew wrote that he is in love with this man. Do you think this is true?"

"For Charles to abandon everyone, I don't doubt it."

"Then I will accept that small, unchristian consolation," Elizabeth said, "that he did it because he would only settle for the deepest love."

... Next Chapter - Failed Medicine


	28. Failed Medicine

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note: **Happy New Year! (Jewish New Year) This is my last post before Rosh Hoshanah. Posting will be a little more sporadic during the High Holidays. I'll try to do twice a week but it may be once a week over the next month. Put the story on alert for the fastest updates. You get them a little before they actually appear on FFnet.

Those of you who have had problems getting your account on my forums, you now can! I finally got the activation thing fixed so I will activate you if you answer the question quickly. The form accepts "Darcy" or "Bennet."

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 28 – Failed Medicine

"You have been playing with that thing all day. North is not going to be in any other direction no matter how hard you try to make it so."

Paul's voice brought a smile to Charles' lips. "I know. Just foolish I guess." He closed the case to the compass and set it on the bed stand. "Did you get dinner?"

"I hope you like cheese, because it was practically all they had. That and wine, of course." The hour was late, but they were still operating at odd hours. Fear, sadness, and collective exhaustion were catching up on them as quickly as cabin fever from their room at the inn, which barely qualified as such.

They did not stray far from their arrival site, if anyone was looking for them. Instead of going to Paris, they opted for a coastal town that was far less expensive, as neither could afford to exceed the little money they had as it was. Charles reserved a good chunk of their coin for postage and began mailing off letters as soon as he had a moment to sit at the writing table that was barely larger than the width of the paper. Paul sent a note to his sister with his location and apologies, but felt no need to write his parents. Charles did his best to encourage him otherwise, but Paul shook his head and would not relent.

"My father caught me with a dirty book when I was twelve," Paul said. "That kind of dirty book, the one that requires more than a scolding. Suddenly we were the strictest of churchgoers, sitting in the first pew if we could manage it, and I was tutored and provided him with essays on morals and values for a year. He might have been physically cruel, but I think he was at that moment a bit afraid to touch me, as if I was infectious."

"Did your mother know?"

"I doubt it. She would have said something. Nonetheless my father made every effort to correct me and I made every effort to appear the apt pupil." He frowned. "Come to think of it, I believe my marriage was arranged within the year. I was too young to consider that it might be connected. And to think, I might have married Miss Garrow if she had never found out."

Charles did not like that idea, and his expression must have indicated such, because Paul kissed him. "She did find out, and look where we are. Together in a horrible inn with good wine, completely abandoned by our families ... I was going somewhere good with this. I was trying."

"It was an admirable effort." And it was. They had only each other, and they tried to make the best of it. There were times when Charles felt terribly lonely, disconnected from his family, but it was harder to be lonely when he slept in a warm bed with someone else beside him. Watching Paul when he was sleeping, his countenance so free from the worries the day brought, he could not bring himself to imagine what his life would be had they separated at the dock, Paul to live his life on the streets of Paris, and Charles to return to his lies at the Bingley house.

Charles closed his writing pan and put the stopper on the ink jar. They had to clear the writing table to create a dinner table, with the bread left over from the day before and the copious and fantastic wine. "We're going to become drunkards at this rate."

"What else have we to do? If you know a more savory and satisfying hobby, please inform me," Paul replied, adding, "And not the one you are thinking of."

"I am not so filthy."

"You are not? I am disappointed. I had such hope."

Charles laughed and the meal was temporarily forgotten.

*******************************************

"Dr. Creswell? You have visitors."

Dr. Simon Creswell looked up from the paper. "Who is it? Patients?"

"Sir Daniel and Lady Maddox, sir."

He put the day's news aside. "Send them in."

Dr. Maddox entered; Simon could hear the cane from outside the door. He did not let his wife guide him. "Simon."

"Daniel." Since, that apparently was today's form of address. He stood and bowed. "Lady Maddox."

She turned to her husband. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. It's just wood."

Lady Maddox, whom he'd always found a sensible, if high-strung woman, took her husband's cane from his hand, approached Simon, and struck his side with it. "You bastard."

"Lady Maddox!"

But she kept striking him, so that he fell over and curled into a position to protect his head. She wasn't striking him hard enough to hurt him, but he would be bruised. "Daniel!"

"I'm sorry I couldn't do it myself. And that's probably enough." He accepted his cane back from his wife. "Thank you."

By now the servants had caught wind of something and entered, flocking around their master as he staggered to his feet. Lady Agatha Creswell entered, but had missed the action. "What is going on?"

"Sorry, Simon," Dr. Maddox said, though he didn't sound all too sorry as his wife took her place at his side. "Usually I'm not so harsh on other doctors for bad medical advice, but this is my nephew we're talking about."

"A steak and some wet towels," Simon said to the servant, and slunk into his chair. "It's not worth denying the association, is it?"

"So he did tell you who he was."

"I mentioned your name when we first met, and though he had every intention of disguising his identity, that hardly lasted. What's happened? Is he in jail?"

"No, he's in France. Likely permanently. You were no doubt the shining example of such an action, as he's run off with someone instead of marrying. I wonder where he got the idea that that would work out for him."

"I didn't – I counseled him otherwise. Repeatedly." He shooed the servants away, but not his wife. He felt like he needed another person in the room. "Please believe me – I told him about the pleasures of having a household, and he said he wanted children, and that he loved his family. But he was still profoundly unhappy, and you know as well as I do there was nothing I could do to change that." But he had failed his patient, in a way. "I'm sorry, Daniel, for your family's distress. I truly am. But from a fellow colleague, please take my word that I did everything I could for my patient, and would prefer to say no more about him."

The servant arrived with the steak, and Lady Agatha got rid of him and applied it to her husband's head where he told her to. "Was that your only intention? Just beating my husband?"

"Forgive us for being distressed," Dr. Maddox said, sounding slightly apologetic. "I did not mean to excessively harm you, nor did Caroline. But I do feel responsible when I give recommendations."

"I understand," Simon said, gesturing for his wife to hold back her angry torrent of words. "I suppose I deserved it a little." He wasn't sure that he did, but it was the right thing to say. They were hurting. Charles meant a great deal to them, and he was gone. "The family has cut all contact?"

"The family is in shock."

"I do not think my brother will cut all contact, depending on what makes the papers," Caroline Maddox said, "but I doubt Charles will ever return to England, and if he does, only in secret."

Simon looked to her, and saw her eyes were red. She was not a mad woman. She was just upset, and he was a target. He was used to being a target. Now, perhaps, she would begin to heal. "I am truly sorry. May I offer you some tea?"

"You're just going to invite us in as if nothing happened? When we perhaps acted a little hastily and foolishly?"

"Someday we will look back at this and laugh," Simon said to Dr. Maddox, "but who knows when _someday_ will come. Let me take something for the pain – something with a very good vintage – and I'll be happy to do so now instead."

*******************************************

The Maddoxes left the Creswell mansion on surprisingly amiable terms with their former target and returned to Chesterton. In the carriage they were far more at ease, even after the effects of the wine passed, then the aftereffects of the wine (and Simon Creswell had excellent taste in wines). It was as if a bubble was broken, though there had been for them a violent means to the end. Charles' letter to them, specifically, mentioned Simon extensively, and though it spoke well of him, it could not diffuse their anger.

"He was very kind to us." Caroline leaned on her husband.

"He was. He always is."

"We were rude."

"Short of shooting the man I don't know how we could have been ruder, but as you said, he was very kind to us. He is an exceptionally kind man. And I will have to emphasize that when I explain to your brother why I sent his son to him, if he told him. G-d, I hope he didn't."

"He probably did."

"Yes, from the looks of it."

Emily and Henry Jordan were at Chesterton to greet them. Frederick and Heather were in London, helping Danny do whatever he was doing (Dr. Maddox's guess was something involving sending Charles money) with a promise to return. Even Emily got her own letter, a day later (and with an apology from Charles for an exhausted hand), and she broke into tears upon reading it even though she already heard the news.

Brian and Nadezhda quickly joined them; everyone wanted to be around each other. "Danny received a letter from Charles with his location," Brian said. "He is settled on the coast. Danny was charged with liquidating his assets because he was the only person available to do it. Or the only one Charles thought he could trust."

"Does he really think his father will abandon him?"

Brian shrugged. "He doesn't want to chance it. Being on the lam, you don't do things like that. As for what Bingley does, well, we'll wait and see."

*******************************************

For the first night since the news about his son, Bingley was able to join Jane in bed. For three days she slept so fitfully that he or Elizabeth or even Georgie stayed by her side, and now Eliza was here. Seeing her children made her recover somewhat, before the brief realization that one was missing and possibly forever gone, and she cried in his arms before slumping over from sheer exhaustion. They woke her, and made her drink some broth before she could sleep again. The doctor was still encouraging and said a vigil by her side was not required.

Bingley fell asleep with his arms around her, to be roused when she slipped from his grasp to momentarily leave, then return, setting the cup of tea on the stand beside her. She readily accepted his grasp again, and he nuzzled her.

"Pray, what are you thinking?"

"I am ashamed," he said. "It is so trivial."

"Then console me with it."

Bingley smiled a little. "I was thinking, when you were sick with a cold in Netherfield, how I dreamed I could comfort you myself, and not leave you with your sister. You stayed six days and I saw you only at the very end, when you were well enough to leave my presence. It was agony."

"You loved me even then?"

"Of course. I avoided saying too much in front of my sisters or Darcy, knowing they would not understand, and disapprove. But Darcy was busy much of the time when we were inside and had little to say."

"Was he?"

"I realize now, he was busy admiring at Elizabeth."

Jane giggled. "How cruel it must have been to all of you!"

"Indeed. My sisters squabbling with each other, Darcy mooning over Elizabeth, and Elizabeth avoiding us altogether because she was so utterly confused by her reception. And me, unable to even see you." He kissed her. "Though the moment is not right to say this, this is much better."

Jane turned so she faced him. "I know it is too much to ask -"

"Nothing is too much to ask of me, my angel."

"I cannot sleep knowing Charles thinks he is abandoned. How he must suffer - in the arms of a ... lover or not. I cannot stand it."

"We are in agreement, then."

"What shall we do?"

Bingley sighed. "If he is to have no children, then it makes sense to alter my will so that Edmund will inherit Kirkland. This will bring him some security in his new marriage."

"But what does that do for Charles?"

"As I would never abandon Edmund, the same should be applied to Charles, despite his actions and the stain on his character." He frowned. It was not an easy decision. "I could provide him with a living, as my father did to me while he was still alive. The entirety of the fortune was only a bequest upon his death. Something reasonable. He's not setting up a household."

"No." Jane said sadly, "I did want grandchildren."

"We already have four, and soon it will be five, and likely more after that." In answer to her question, he said, "Yes, I wanted the chain unbroken, but Charles has made his choice and though we cannot understand it, he has not asked us to. He has only asked us to forgive him for causing so much misery." That was the only request of the letter. He did not ask for money. Likely, he did not expect to receive any. "Even a reasonable amount can keep him settled for the rest of his life. He has always shown prudence with money as a bachelor; I have no doubt it would continue."

"And if there is a scandal ..."

"Then we shall be guilty of the scandalous behavior of supporting a wayward son, joining the ranks of parents among the Ton who find one reason or another to do so. I have been guilty of worse crimes."

Jane cupped his cheeks with her hands, still so slender and soft, even if they were a little wrinkled. "I want to see him."

"If he avoids detection, I see no reason he cannot quietly return to England for a time."

"There are people in this family who may disagree with this plan."

"If they do, they are not acting as family." He added, "And before you say it, Darcy has been nothing but supportive."

She covered her mouth. "I did not mean it that way."

"He was on the list. Of potentials."

"Perhaps." She changed the subject. "I want Charles to come home for Edmund's wedding. I will write him and tell him so."

"And I will make it clear it is not a suggestion." He grinned. "See? You will see him soon, he will make a life for himself that will make him happy, and we will commit the terrible crime of defending our son from the society that would shun him." Bingley squeezed her hand. "He is not lost. I promise you, this very strange oddity of a family will be whole again."

*******************************************

The next morning, with Jane sleeping in, Bingley spoke a few words to Elizabeth and then summoned Edmund to the study. His younger son could not have been that surprised that a meeting would occur between them, or perhaps, how it would go. What Bingley did not know was the full extent of Edmund's feelings about Charles, and perhaps he would never know. Perhaps it was better that way.

Edmund entered and bowed. "Father." He accepted a glass of morning ale and the servant left them at Bingley's wave. Only Monkey remained between them, making a mess of the assorted oddities on the desk. Bingley did not stop him.

"As you undoubtedly suspect, there will be a change in inheritances," Bingley said. "If Charles is to live this life unrepentant, as our Vicar might say, then my will will be changed so that the son who has children - or is at the very least, married - will inherit Kirkland upon my death."

Edmund nodded. "Thank you, Father." He did not seem overeager. His somber tones matched the rest of the house's.

"I have decided to put our hearts all at rest and provide Charles with a living of three thousand pounds a year. Since his intention to marry and set up a household is clearly the opposite of such a notion, he will not need more. If he returns to society, this may change, but that is what I will present to him for the moment." Bingley pulled the Chinese coin out of Monkey's mouth. "What are your feelings on the matter, as you are to be Mr. Bingley of Kirkland and a small portion of Derbyshire?"

Edmund was appropriately tongue-tied, but he found his words quickly. "I've known about Charles for a long time. Forgive me for being silent on the matter."

"In that, I assure you, you are forgiven."

Edmund looked relieved. "I did not get along with my brother, as we all know, for some years, though the only people who knew why were my sisters and Geoffrey, who discovered by circumstance. When I came to him after Lucy threw me out of the house, I half-expected him to turn me away, as I might have done with him were the situations reversed. Instead he embraced me and supported me in every way that he could." He frowned. "In some respects, he is a better man than me."

"You judge yourself harshly. Charles is older. He has experience in tolerance and struggle."

"It is still true. I've never been as kind as Charles. I wish I could give to Miss Richmond half of the love Charles gives the people he cares for. Forgive me for speculating about the future, but when you pass, if your will is not sufficient to provide for him, I will do so. I owe him that at the very least. I can never accept ... that part of him, that is so terrible, but I suppose that is not my concern."

Bingley was impressed. "If there is a revelation – "

"He will be safe in France. He will be safe anywhere but England, unless he gets into trouble in France, but he's too smart for that. He managed for years in Italy. He might go back there. He might even still own the house. And if there is trouble there, we can bail him out, and he can flee to another country. There is always a way."

"Very optimistic," Bingley said. "You are nearer to him than you think. Or at least to me. Then it is settled. I will not take you away from Miss Richmond, who will stay at Pemberley, but I will require that Charles be invited to any wedding and we make any arrangements for him to be there. It is your mother's wish."

"Yes, Father."

"Then I will write him, and stop this nonsense of him liquidating his funds to save himself. L-rd knows what hovel he's in at the moment. I won't stand for it. And from there, we shall see." He withdrew paper. "Would you go to your mother, and tell her of your agreement? I am sure she would wish to see you if she is awake. If not, let her sleep."

"Is she better?"

He could answer confidently, "She will be."

*******************************************

"You are speaking to a dead man," Paul said, holding up a letter. It was too far away and Charles was still too much asleep to make out the words. "On paper at the very least. My sister responded to my letter, and my parents have declared me dead at sea. I may disappear before your eyes at any moment." He passed a pile of letters to Charles. "If your family is intent on denouncing you, they are doing so with great brevity."

"Very funny," Charles said. He passed over the ones he usually went to first – from Danny Maddox or Eliza – and went to the larger letter with his father's seal. He held his breath as he tore it open.

_Dear Charles,_

_Despite your situation, you remain my beloved son. Therefore I am bequeathing you_

" – a living of three thousand pounds per annum!" There was more to it, but it was hard to read as Paul practically leapt on him and Charles returned it with a kiss. He could barely keep in place from his joy. "He is not abandoning me. He is too good. Also, my mother probably talked him into it."

"Three thousand pounds? What are we going to do, build a mansion and fill it with artwork?"

Charles grinned. "We must be _responsible_ with it." He looked over Paul's shoulder at the letter, held up to the light. "He goes on to say my brother shall inherit Kirkland – of course – unless I were to return to England and marry, however he will not be shocked if I do not do so, and wishes to see me comfortable in my chosen situation, shocking as it is."

Paul did not release him, and stroked his hair. "Very shocking."

"...but on the condition that I must make every effort to attend my brother's wedding, date to be decided, as my mother is eager to see me."

"This is the bastard brother?"

"He's not a bastard."

"I meant it not in reference to his legitimacy."

Charles rolled his eyes. "We once fought, yes. I would say he was the worst denouncement, but Geoffrey actually punched me – which, before you get in a fuss, I was very much deserving. But we have made amends, Edmund and I."

"And this Geoffrey?"

"My cousin and brother-in-law, and the one who sent me to the doctor who attempted to not inspire me to run off to France with the man I loved." He kissed Paul and spun him around in a merry little dance. "The doctor did try."

Paul smirked. "I'm sure he did his very best."

... Next Chapter - Monks and Gypsies


	29. Monks and Gypsies

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note: **Sorry for the delay. I moved this week, and next week is Yom Kippur. Posting will be a little more sporadic during the High Holidays. I'll try to do twice a week but it may be once a week over the next month. Put the story on alert for the fastest updates. You get them a little before they actually appear on FFnet.

Those of you who have had problems getting your account on my forums, you now can! I finally got the activation thing fixed so I will activate you if you answer the question quickly. The form accepts "Darcy" or "Bennet."

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 29 – Monks and Gypsies

Nothing brought Jane Bingley so great a joy as to be in touch with her son again. Charles replied that he would be happy to attend the wedding, whenever it would be, but until then he would be busy establishing a base in a coastal city while he searched for suitable housing. He promised her, he would never be far – just over the water, like Grégoire. He could sail into Liverpool and avoid London entirely.

While Charles never mentioned the name of his lover in his letters, Danny informed them (when asked) that it was Paul. Charles was conspicuous to leave him out except for an accidental, crossed out "we" instead of "I." He was grateful to his parents and family, and more than happy to pass Kirkland to Edmund, who was making plans for his own future.

Danny had a hero's welcome when he visited Derbyshire. In his usual manner, he smiled a little and bowed his head at their complements and did not entirely answer their questions of the final evening before Charles' departure, but he was visibly relieved to have the burden of secreting away Charles' money to France.

His parents came with him while their other children remained in Chesterton. Caroline was eager to see her brother and sister-in-law, and where she went, so did Dr. Maddox. They did not mention their visit to Simon's house.

"I am glad to see you so much recovered from all of this ... business," Caroline said to Jane. "You should not make yourself sick over it."

"How could I not?" Jane added, "I remember your reaction to hearing Danny was staying in Japan."

Caroline immediately changed the subject, "So when am I to meet Edmund's fiancée?"

"They are still courting, because of the annulment. It wouldn't be prudent."

"Of course."

"But you will meet her tonight. She is staying at Pemberley. At first she was very shy, but she is most improved in that regard."

*******************************************

"Now ... aim slightly to the left this time. Don't overthink it – go!"

Julia Richmond let loose another arrow, this one hitting the target, the second of four to do so. Geoffrey, sitting on a hay bale and holding Mala on a leash, admitted it was a far target.

"Very good," Georgie said, and the children clapped. Mala barked, as she did every time an arrow went flying, as she was eager to chase after it. The black hound was already a third larger than she had been upon her purchase and showing a good deal of hunting spirit, perhaps more for her breed than usual. Since Julia's arrows were mostly hitting ground, they decided it was best not to let her loose to chase after them, lest she be hit.

Brian was the first to try to hold her, but he fell over and she escaped. William tried the leash, but she was still too strong, and Alison held the leash until her arms got tired, and she passed it to her father. "She's so strong."

"She'll be even stronger soon. She's hound, after all." He looked down at Mala, who looked up at him with her eyes glittering in the sun. "There's a good girl."

"Though I do enjoy the exercise," Julia said, "why am I learning this?"

"So you can threaten Edmund with it."

"I have no desire to do so!"

"I didn't mean shoot him. I said _threaten_," Georgie said. "A healthy relationship is based on openness. For example, I am open to expressing my feelings knowing Geoffrey will understand them."

"And I am open to understanding I ought not get in the way of her feelings," Geoffrey said.

"I am not going to shoot Edmund. I have no intention of even threatening to do so."

Geoffrey laughed. "That Georgie taught you how will be enough." Which earned him a glare from Georgiana that quickly dissolved into laughter.

"What is this? Why do I feel the need to bring Danny for protection?" Edmund Bingley said, emerging over the hill. "Miss Richmond. Georgie. Geoffrey."

"You said I was a chaperone," Danny said, "because you are so insistent on doing this properly, having a long history of doing things properly."

"I will have you know that if I had a way to end this sentence in a way that counters you, I would," Edmund said, shaking his finger at Danny before proceeding to Julia.

But Brian Darcy got in the way. "Uncle Edmund!" He raised his arms.

"You're getting a bit big for this, are you not?" He looked down at Brian, who only continued holding up his arms. "I suppose not." With a heavy breath he pulled Brian up into his arms, then turned his attention to the woman he could not ignore for long. "Miss Richmond." He tried to bow, but didn't get very far.

"Mr. Bingley," she curtseyed.

"I think you already have your chaperone," Danny said as Mala sniffed at his feet. He was wearing sandals, so she started licking his toes.

"Yes, but don't wander too far. He cries," Geoffrey said.

"Not in my arms," Edmund said, and with a nod from Georgiana, walked further down the path, where they were out of earshot and at least partially out of sight from the others. "Julia. I would offer you a hand but – well." He smiled at Brian, who smiled back at him.

"Julia," Brian said, pronouncing it _Ju-lee-ah_ in a very meticulous manner.

Edmund sat on the stone bench, and she sat beside him. "We are to see each other at dinner."

"We are."

"If you have important business – "

"I have no important business," he said. "Though I have no wish to be idle, I have been informed that I am now heir to a great estate in Derbyshire."

She took his hand, now that it was available, and Brian played with her bracelet. "Did your brother respond?"

"Yes. He is delighted with the proceedings, and wishes me all the best. And I have no doubt he means it." Edmund smiled sadly. "I hope only that he is truly in love, and has not thrown his life away over a fling."

"Are Bingleys known to do that?"

"You've been speaking too much with my sister."

"She said you would say that."

He turned away. "Definitely too much."

"Edmund."

But when he turned his head back, he was smiling. "She is a bad influence is all."

"You called her, if I recall."

"You were not present when I did, so you do not recall, but yes, I did." He did pause, readying himself. "I was going to do this without a child in my lap, but I fear he may start to cry if I let him down."

"Uncle Edmund," Brian said, tugging at Edmund's vest.

He sighed. "I was correct. So, I will not be on bended knee, and there will be a child that is not mine hanging from me." He took her hand in his. "Julia Richmond, will you be my wife?"

"Wife!" Brian shouted, almost ear-piercingly high, before she could answer.

She giggled. "Yes." They snuck a quick kiss between Brian's squirming. "Yes, I would be honored, Mr. Bingley."

"You must call me Edmund – now that this courtship nonsense is over."

"I have never enjoyed calling you anything else."

*******************************************

Though it came to no one's surprise, the announcement of the engagement over dinner brought great cheer (and a few extra toasts) to the evening. These things were agreed: It would be a short engagement, and a private ceremony held maybe in Pemberley's chapel. Edmund and Julia would marry properly in India, where if there were even banns to be posted, certainly no one in England would read them.

Only Bingley shook his head. "I know love. You will find every reason to spend all your time with her and none of your time studying Hindustani like you should be doing!"

"I thought everyone speaks English there now," Darcy said, sitting to his left. "Only with a Mughal accent."

"They have twenty-seven languages and they aren't going to abandon them because of a few colonials," Bingley said, but he was India's sole defender that night.

Though there was no question as to whom would be the ring bearer, no amount of alcohol could help Edmund decide on a groomsman. "I will make my decision when I damn well please. Try as I might, I'm not marrying her tomorrow!"

Julia had few possessions to her name besides what she came to Derbyshire with – a few items from her childhood and her gowns from her previous marriage. Edmund, out of spite and to help pay for his divorce, had sold his home in London, but the Bingley house was now conspicuously absent, so they would honeymoon there as they prepared for India. She had no objections to spending her first year of marriage there – if anything, she longed to be away from everyone else who was not the man she fell in love with what seemed like so long ago, but had only been months.

They set the Derbyshire wedding for August, and hoped for the best.

*******************************************

The Maddoxes returned to Chesterton. Frederick was eager for news from Danny, who yielded little (like his father, Caroline muttered). He would speak more to Lady Heather, who at least knew Julia, about the plans for after the wedding. They only knew, at the moment, that it would be family only, in the chapel at Pemberley, and unannounced. The Vicar of Lambton would perform the service.

"You are just like Papa," Emily Jordan said to her brother, and he just smiled.

There was enough to do with them all together that Daniel Maddox Junior, who often preferred solitude and silence for at least part of his day, had little time for himself. He rose early, long before the first servant was awake, and dressed himself in part of his meditation robes, and set out. It was an established route through the woods. He remembered it as a child, and there was a pond there where he liked to meditate. When he was finished, he picked up his cane, and rose unsteadily to his feet at first as he slid them back into his geta and began his walk, even though he knew someone was there.

He even let them approach, and put the gun against his back. "Give me your coins."

It was a woman, her accent particular. He produced a small rod, a miniature version of his shakujou, a ringed staff designed to make noise. "This is only to warn animals of my approach," he said, shaking it with one hand before putting it back in the fold of his kimono. Since it was made of brass, it did sound a lot like he was carrying a large chunk of change. "Forgive me."

With that, Danny swung around, knocking the gun out of her hand with his cane. He heard her cry out, and the gun go flying into the thicket, at which point he turned back around, put his cane out so it felt the ground in front of him, and commenced walking.

"Hey! Stay and fight."

He paused, and arched his head back. "As you can see, I am unable to."

She rushed around somewhere behind him, and he heard the cock of a gun. "What makes you think I'll just let you leave?"

He stopped again. "You have no reason to harm me. I have nothing of value on me, and I don't believe it is part of a gypsy's honor to shoot a blind man in the back. So," and he tipped his bowl hat and continued walking.

She ran in front of him, moving much faster than he intended to move. "Give me something. Please."

Danny listened to the tone of her voice. "You haven't eaten in days, have you? Where is your family? Where is your caravan?"

"In a poorhouse. Institutionalized by the gorgios. But what would you know about that?"

"Well, mostly what you just told me." He reached into his pack, and removed a scone. "Here."

He could sense her hesitation, but she did take it, and began to eat it so quickly he worried for her health, but he did not say anything. "There's a stream – it's near here, and you can drink from it. It's safe water. I used to swim there as a child."

"How do you know where it is?"

"I remember." Danny offered his hand, and though she didn't take it, he walked in that direction anyway. It was not far off, but fairly deep into the woods. "Here, somewhere. There's a large rock, and a small circle of stones I made, to help myself find it." She found it, because he could hear her lapping at the water with her hands. "I wish I had more on me."

"I'd best be off," she said, "and you'd not be seen – "

"With a gypsy? Or you not seen with a blind man dressed as a monk?"

"That's not what monks look like. They wear brown, on the church walls." She meant, in paintings and murals that still depicted British life before the Dissolution.

"Japanese monk." He clarified, "from the Orient."

"You don't look like you're from the Orient."

"I'm not. I was simply there for a time."

"Is that where – you know, your face?"

"Yes, but I was going blind anyway. My father is blind, too. My brother and sister were spared. The man I met only hastened the process."

She had attacked him, alone, like a bandit but not a smart one. She was hungry and desperate and probably had little on her aside from her weapon. She smelled terrible. "My name is Danny Maddox."

"Mirela."

He bowed to her. "Miss Mirela. Unless you are married."

"I am not."

He nodded. "If you need more food, come back this way tomorrow, and I will bring you something."

"Who says you won't have your brother and his eyesight here to jump me?"

"I say it. You can believe it if you want." He tipped his hat again, and went on his way.

This time, she did not follow.

*******************************************

"Uncle Danny, where have you been?" Stewart Maddox, at a very surly age of five, nearly assaulted him as he entered. "You promised to go fishing with me today!"

"Calm down. He's not even had breakfast, no doubt," Frederick said from behind him. "Danny, you ought not to go out alone for so long. Who knows what would happen to you?"

"Nothing interesting, I'm sure," Danny said. "Now come, Master Stewart, and I will have something to eat – I've misplaced my scone – and we'll see about that fishing expedition."

*******************************************

Danny remembered his promise. He was even a little early, it still being dark when he left. The sun rose against his back as he meditated and then he continued on the path until he found the stones.

"You did come."

"Miss Mirela." He had a basket this time. "Not all at once," he said as she tore into it. "You'll get sick."

"Who are you to say?"

"My father is one of England's most distinguished physicians," he said. "If only that meant anything, but it doesn't. I never studied medicine. I just know not to eat a lot of food at once on an empty stomach, from experience."

"Did you fast? When you were a monk?"

He removed his shoes and sat down. "I did. I hated it. I suppose they would have let me go and eat, because I was a lousy gaijin, but I wanted to impress them. They took me in when I was wounded."

"A lousy what?"

"Gaijin. Foreigner."

"In some places, we say, _gaje_. It means, not Romani."

Danny laughed. "I cannot say there is a clear connection, but you have been traveling for a long time, have you not?"

"Legends say we left India after a war."

"India is not so far from Japan, in comparison to the journey to England. Three months at sea, if you survive the journey."

"I could never be on a ship that long. I'd be sick."

"How do you know?"

She did not immediately answer him. Maybe because she was so busy eating. He was patient. He had nothing he could imagine that would be better to do.

"So your father is a doctor?"

"Was, technically. Now he can only give suggestions. He was Chief Anatomist at Cambridge, and before that, physician to George IV when he was Prince Regent."

"And he didn't make you become a doctor?"

"It wasn't an option. But even then, no, I had little interest, and he did not force it on me. It is too gruesome a profession, if practiced correctly."

"Says a man who assaulted a woman."

"I said gruesome, not rude."

She snickered. "And I suppose it was rude of me to try to rob you."

"Yes, it was a bit impolite."

"Asking doesn't get me anywhere. I don't want to go to the poorhouse, and work until I drop dead. I want to travel, like my parents used to, so I do. Only without the wagon. They sold it."

"That is a shame."

"Why do you say that?"

Danny shrugged. "The gypsy wagons I did see when I was a boy were very beautiful. I tried to go into one, once, and have my fortune read, but my mother wouldn't let me."

"I never learned to read fortunes." She swallowed the tea in the flask. "I would read your palm if I could. Or I could make something up."

"That I'll have a long life, a beautiful wife and many strong sons?"

"I think that is what they normally say. But you might you know, go off the path a bit if you've got a curve in the line of your hand. That's what we would say."

"A life-changing event, no doubt. But eventually for the good."

"A satisfied customer."

Danny nodded. "I think I understand. My mother saved some money, but I still didn't get to see the wagon on the inside."

"It's just crammed with stuff."

"Still. I would like to have seen it."

They talked a little, sharing things they had or had not done, regrets about things they could not do or undo, and finally she said, "Will you come tomorrow?"

"If you ask."

"I am asking, gorgio."

"Then I will, gypsy."

She laughed at that, and so did he.

... Next Chapter - The Second Try

* * *

**Historical Note:** Most people will tell you that gypsies call non-gypsies "_gajey_." This is the more common usage, but in the 19th-century England, the term as far as I can tell was _gorgio_. It would vary from country to country in early modern Europe.


	30. The Second Try

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note: **Again - delays. Booo. Yes, I know. Posting should resume as normal when the holidays end this coming weekend.

Those of you who have had problems getting your account on my forums, you now can! I finally got the activation thing fixed so I will activate you if you answer the question quickly. The form accepts "Darcy" or "Bennet."

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 30 - The Second Try

"As you can see, the view is quite beautiful."

The guide was absolutely right. The view was fantastic. Though not directly, the wide balcony has a view of the English coastline, if only a speck in the distance.

"Will you excuse us? I must speak with my solicitor."

The guide nodded and shut the double doors, leaving them alone on the balcony.

"I'm your solicitor now?" Paul said.

"Yes, but you're paid very well," Charles replied, leaning on the balcony, the wind whipping up his hair, which needed a trim. Paul liked it a little on the wild side, said he made an adorable blond, so he treated him. "Well above average. More if you're good to me."

They didn't know if they were being watched through the window, so Paul just leaned in, but didn't touch him. "I think it's beautiful."

"The view or me?"

"I thought we were doing this professionally. Or attempting to."

Charles grinned. "It's very nice. Nicer than the last two places. It has a bigger kitchen."

"And the view is incredible."

"It is," he said. "I want the master bedchamber. The light is better."

"You're making me the mistress?"

"You'll hardly be in it anyway."

"We should at least flip a coin."

Charles stood his ground. "The light is better. And who was going on about the light in my hair?"

"I was being romantic."

"You were. But it was probably true."

Paul did not deny that it was. He loved the light in Charles' hair in the morning, when it came streaming in through the windows. "What do you think? It is your money."

"I think we should take the lease option for the year. My father feels strongly about leasing a large place first, to see how it works out with servants and whatnot. There will undoubtedly be repairs we do not know about."

"Undoubtedly."

"And it will require better furnishings."

"That will take time. Trips to Paris, probably."

"And a very strong bed. Otherwise, I would say it's ours."

Paul could not resist the urge, and hugged him. "We have a _place_."

Charles beamed. "A home."

*******************************************

Danny met Mirela at the stream every day of the week up until Sunday, when he would be at church instead. His family inquired as to his whereabouts for increasingly long periods of time, and he only responded with a persistent need for fresh air.

On Saturday, Mirela inquired if there was something she could do for him, though she did it in such a roundabout fashion as one could only arrive at the conclusion she sought to say so directly. Danny shook his head. "I do not expect any sort of payment. If I give food to you, I receive karma for a good deed, and you receive karma for providing me with a means to perform such a deed."

"Are those some kind of Oriental points for the afterlife?"

"Something like that," he said. "In Japan, they believe that you reincarnate – that when your body dies, your soul is reborn in another body."

"Like possession."

"No, a body not in use. You're reborn as a child. On the mainland in Asia, there are people who claim they can find someone again. After the person dies, if they are very spiritual, they will leave directions pointing to a child, and after a few years, a search party is sent out to search for a child in that area. If the child has certain personality traits, and recognizes the mystics, then they identify the person as their friend or teacher reborn."

Mirela laughed, but not in a way that mocked him. "What does the family say?"

"Since everyone is someone reborn, I suppose they don't mind."

"I prefer heaven. I'm not sure I'm going there, but it seems nicer than being a kid again. Though I suppose, it would be boring after awhile." She had an accent, very strong, but her English was clear and perfectly easy to understand. She was, technically, a British subject, having been born in the lowlands of Scotland to a now-dissolved family circle. "Are you planning to be reborn?"

"I am planning to find out what my options are after I die. Then I hope I will have enough karma to make the best selection."

"That's going to take a lot more food than this."

He laughed. "It is."

*******************************************

However small, quiet, and informal the wedding of Edmund Bingley and Julia Richmond was to be, it still required preparations, even if most of those were gathering the family. Anne Jameson (nee Darcy), her husband and daughter in tow, arrived as quickly as the carriage could take them, to meet the prospective bride and give Edmund a hearty congratulations. Patrick Bellamont, who was studying law at Oxford, arrived in lieu of his parents, who were more removed from the Bingley side of the family. Everyone was pleased to discover time at Oxford had softened his harsh Irish brogue, at least when he put effort into it, though he would quickly lapse if he forgot.

"Dey don' loike it," he said. "My Tutor, especially."

"It is important to be on good relations with your Tutor," the newly-arrived George Wickham said. His wife was entering Confinement, and so remained in Town with his daughter, so his stay would be of brief duration. He had a portraiture made of his daughter, and showed it to as many people as possible with all the eagerness of a young father.

Isabella Franklin (nee Wickham) rolled her eyes as her husband carried in their daughter, Rose, who was two but still very small. Their son Edward could walk around on his own, and usually followed his Uncle Wickham around.

Edward got on well with William Darcy and Stewart Maddox, who was the oldest of the bunch, and was afraid only of Alison Darcy, and a bit of Mala before they were properly introduced. The puppy was for once too busy being passed between children to chew at the rugs, though she had yet to understand the concept of "fetch" and would merely go after the stick, find it, and sit down and chew on it until they fetched _her_. The look of surprise on her face when they came running after her, shouting "No!" was priceless.

"That is an interesting name," Elizabeth said as she watched her grandchildren with her niece. "Mala."

"It is short for Mahakala, the Buddhist protector demoness. She is black. And many-armed."

"Like the tapestry you have."

"Yes." At her aunt's look, Georgie insisted, "The name was Alison's idea."

"Perhaps not in its origins," was all Elizabeth would say, but showed no disapproval.

Dr. and Lady Maddox arrived with Emily and Henry Jordan, their son, and finally Danny Maddox. "Here you can have all the fresh air you like," the doctor said to his son, still somewhat flummoxed by Danny's sudden wanderlust. There was more to it, but Danny would show that hand when he pleased, or when it became necessary.

Jane, determined to have her fourth and likely last wedding of a child be beautiful, worked with her husband to decorate Pemberley's chapel, normally sparse but tasteful in its arrangements. There were ribbons and flowers everywhere, of all colors, but all leading to the white ones that tied in a giant knot above the alter.

"It is so much," Julia said, when she saw the final arrangements. Bingley was still lining walls with tiny, colorful Indian flowers. He just smiled at her and continued his work. "The first time – the room was grander, bigger – it was St. George's. They don't let you fix it up."

"That's why my daughters were not married at St. George's, and my son won't be, not the second time around," Bingley replied. "This time we do it right."

"Mr. Bingley is sentimental about his daughters," Elizabeth explained to Julia. "Even prospective ones."

The day before, the final guests arrived, the two not in the family. Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson were invited at the separate but equally eager insistences of Edmund and Julia, and they traveled from Somerset – their longest journey in awhile – to stay at Kirkland.

Mrs. Wilkinson embraced Julia, who ran to her like an overexcited schoolgirl. "Goodness, he has been good to you, and he is not even your husband yet. You look well, Miss Richmond."

"Thank you so much for coming. I know it was a journey."

"Nonsense. You know I looked forward to it."

It was not until after the family dinner at Pemberley, when the men had retired to their brandy and the women to cards, that someone made their quiet approach. Eliza Turner, somehow, on the other side of the house, came running as he entered, still dusty from the road. "Charles!"

Charles Bingley III meant to enter without a procession of people greeting him like he was royalty, but it did not happen. Jane followed, and held her son, weeping on his shoulder and assuring him it was for joy when he expressed concern. Though dressed for traveling, his clothing was not shabby, and there was a light in his eyes his father had not realized had been gone, because it had been for so long. When his mother finally released him, he bowed nervously. "Father. Uncle Darcy."

"Son." Bingley shook his hand with both of his own. "I am so glad to see you home." His voice cracked a little as he spoke, biting back tears.

"You look well," was all Darcy said, though there was no hint of disapproval, only relief. He was quiet about it, but Darcy always was.

"My nephew is here?" Caroline Bingley came out of the music room. "Charles! Look at you. You must protect your skin; you are so dangerously tanned."

Charles just grinned. "The weather is very good. I have a place on the coast. It has a magnificent view."

His father slapped him on the back. "Good choice. Paris I've only been to once, and with all its splendor, I can't imagine looking out my window every day to the city grime."

It was Mala who was the first of the younger Darcys, outrunning Georgie. Charles picked up the dog. "This must be Mala."

"No, it's one of the many other dogs we've bought but not written to you about," Georgie said, and kissed him on the cheek. Mala licked his chin. "She likes you."

"I have something for Alison," Charles said in a hushed voice. "I have other gifts, but special for Alison." She was his goddaughter after all. He was practically obligated.

"I'm sure she will appreciate it."

He faced the groom at last, and they shook so hard it was thought one of them might shake from the force of it. "You look well," Charles said to Edmund.

"Charles, may I present my bride, Miss Julia Richmond?" Edmund held her hand as she joined his side.

Charles bowed low. "Miss Richmond."

"Mr. Bingley. It is so nice to finally meet you."

"I had to come," Charles said, with a knowing wink to Edmund.

When she turned to her intended to clarify, Edmund said, "He is to be groomsman."

*******************************************

There was a small room near the chapel, a room for emergency guests and servants that was unoccupied. Charles was waiting there when Edmund met him in the morning. He grabbed him and said, "Be glad you are never to be married."

"Cold feet?"

"My feet are fine. My mind is filled with horrible ... horrible images! My father gave me the worst speech last night – and Uncle Darcy and Uncle Maddox were there, too. And Uncle Brian came just in time, the bastard! I was going to go into the room but they invited me for a drink, and I saw Geoffrey get up and leave with this dastardly look on his face ... My G-d!"

Charles chuckled. "What could they tell you that you do not already know? Have they forgotten you were married once before?"

"I don't know what was going through their heads, and I don't care! This is my last marriage, because I am never going through that again. Never!"

Charles had barely recovered himself when the Vicar entered. Miss Emerson's comments were right, and he did not recall Mr. Emerson at first sight, and then, only vaguely. When he last saw Mr. Emerson, Vicar of Lambton, he was wearing only trousers, shoes, and a white undershirt. In his formal black, the Vicar looked quite different. "Mr. Bingley. Mr. Edmund." He bowed, very gravely.

"This is a wedding, not a funeral," Charles said, seeking to ease the tension before Edmund caught on. "One hopes."

"Do you know who is presenting the bride?"

"Mr. Wilkinson. Of no relation except that he lived next to Julia when she was still married to her former husband." Edmund was nervous for other reasons. "There was an annulment. It was all legal – he was not – "

"There is no need to explain. Your brother is right. Be merry. And have a drink if it will help."

"That is your recommendation? A cupshot groom?"

"I've seen weddings where it probably would have gone better," the Vicar replied with a little smile. "You know the vows?"

"I do," Edmund said. "Believe me – I take them seriously, despite my past. I know it is – "

" – between you and G-d. And your wife, Mr. Edmund." Thomas Emerson had a calm voice. Charles could imagine how he would be attractive and soothing to other people. "The vows you take join the two of you under G-d, and perhaps the state, but the state is temporal and G-d is eternal. You have made your peace with Him. Now enter this union with a promise to Him to love and cherish Miss Richmond and He will be pleased to bless you both."

Mr. Emerson opened the door, indicating it was time for them to line up. The guests were assembled, for the most part, though some were still entering, and the children old enough to attend were being hushed.

"Thank you for standing up with me," Edmund whispered.

"I must admit I was a bit surprised at the request," Charles said to him. "Paul wanted to label you ill for our past, but I told him it was forgotten, and that you are good at heart."

Edmund was pale from nervousness, but he colored a little bit. "Thank you. How are your arrangements? Please, I need the distraction."

"Maybe you should have had the ale," his brother replied. "They are very well. It was frightening at first, but Father has been very generous, and we have a lovely place on the shore. You should come sometime. Paul will make himself scarce."

"When I return from India, perhaps." He looked up as the Vicar made a noise for quiet, and Julia entered, all in white and with silver and jade jewelry from India complimenting her eyes and gown.

Mr. Wilkinson gave her away, and she stood across from Edmund as the Vicar spoke of the blessings of marriage, and the importance of love, understanding, and fidelity (a required part of the speech that still caused a few snickers and trembles in the audience).

Edmund remembered the whole speech but could not recall a single other aspect of his previous wedding ceremony. The words were spoken truly anew as he pledged his love, his life, and his Troth, whatever that was. Brian Darcy meandered his way through the aisle to present the ring, which Edmund placed on her finger. It was a gold band, but inlaid with tiny diamonds all the way around.

"Mr. and Mrs. Bingley, I now pronounce you man and wife."

They beamed, and the small crowd made all of the noise of a fully-packed cathedral.

*******************************************

"You must leave so soon, I know," Jane said, tears falling down her cheeks at the end of the wedding breakfast, hosted at Kirkland, the house the young couple would someday inherit. "For all the secrecy of it. I wish I could be there with you in India."

"I imagine they want their privacy," Bingley said, which made them both blush.

They would be in India a year, if all went to plan. "We have discussed it," Edmund said, with a knowing look at his wife, "and once we are set up, we shall write and invite you to come. Mother, I know Father's been trying to talk you into it for years. Now you simply must."

"Then I will," she said, and kissed her son, and embraced her new daughter again. "All the happiness you have given me, I wish unto you both. Be kind to each other, even when your husband is being silly and deserves a good throttling."

To which, _Bingley_ colored. "Edmund, when she is with child and the child is coming, stay far away from her until you are told to do otherwise." And he looked at Jane, who just smiled.

After every possible well-wisher and goodbye, rice was thrown as they climbed into the carriage, already packed for them and their adventures in the new life that awaited them. Julia tossed her bouquet, but it was Mala who came running out of nowhere and leapt up to catch it.

"Mala, no!" Sarah Darcy said, and had a tug-of-war with it before Mala released it. Sarah stood up, and turned to her mother and many cousins. "What are you looking at?"

*******************************************

"I would ask if you are truly happy, but it is plain on your face," Jane said to her other son. He was holding his nephew Elliot Turner, who was nearly a year old and speaking a word or two, mostly nonsense. "It is as if you were lost to me for so long, and now you are my son again."

"Mother – "

"I am being dramatic, I know. Allow me that." She let Elliot grip her finger with his tiny hand. "Are you well-settled? Do you need more money?"

"We have more than enough. Father was very generous," Charles said. He used 'We' only around Eliza, Georgie and his mother. "The house was well-kept. It will take some time to make it our own."

"As it should. And Paris is such a lovely place to buy furniture. You must live in a beautiful home. These things matter, though we think otherwise." She added, "And visit."

"I promise." He had been there for a week now, and was eager to return to France and Paul. "I will be back at the end of Eliza's term."

"Maybe Christmas?"

"I will think on it." He said honestly, "I don't want to leave Paul alone while I am with my family. His have declared him dead and treat him as such. His sister's letters grow more infrequent. He expected it, but ..." He frowned, and his mother put her hand over his.

Alison entered without knocking. "Uncle Bingley, Uncle Bingley! I figured it out!"

"You did? That didn't take you long. I will have to get you a harder puzzle next time."

She sat down between mother and son on the windowsill where they were sitting, and presented the jewelry box, which had a special wooden latch to it that required some skill to open. "You just push this part in, while you pull the other end out," Alison said, revealing a padded velvet inside. Inside was a necklace. "Hey!"

"You didn't notice that at first? You must have been too eager to show me your skills," Charles said, and passed Elliot to his mother so he could put it over her head himself, and help her with the clasp in the back. It was silver with pearls every few links. "Do you like it?"

She looked in the window, and since it was evening, the lamp against the glass provided a reflection. "I love it. Thank you, Uncle Bingley!" She hugged him with all the ferocity of a child younger than her age. Only then did she remember herself. "Grandmama Bingley. I'm so sorry, I was supposed to curtsey. Mama said – "

"I know what you're _supposed _to do," Jane said to her granddaughter, "but I would be quite surprised if you always did it."

.... Next Chapter - (No Title Yet)


	31. Whispers in the Night

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Author's Note: **Again - delays. Booo. Yes, I know. Posting should resume as normal when the holidays end this coming weekend.

Those of you who have had problems getting your account on my forums, you now can! I finally got the activation thing fixed so I will activate you if you answer the question quickly. The form accepts "Darcy" or "Bennet."

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 31 - Whispers in the Night

In a way, Edmund and Julia Bingley were fortunate that their newly-married status was secret, because they did not receive callers or invitations. Mr. Bingley was "not at home" (meaning he was) and to anyone who would have asked – and no one did – there was no one else in residence. When Charles Bingley III wrote to open the house for them, he specified the servants he wanted there. He had been the most constant and recent occupant of the townhouse in the last few years and knew who could be trusted. Nonetheless he did not stay overnight on his way back to France, only stopping long enough for a meal with them, to wish them well on their journey and to give them an additional gift for their travels.

It was a beautiful hat for Julia Bingley, with a stiff, wide brim and a white veil that served as netting. "I heard you will need it at night, because of the bugs."

"You are very thoughtful," she said, and wished him all the best in his own travels, and Edmund saw his carriage off before returning to his wife and his – now _their_ – bed.

They did with great reluctance leave it, on occasion, to shop for their travels. They did it individually, of course, and as expediently as possible with the help of one of the company managers who had twice been to India and had already made preliminary arrangements for them there. Edmund spent considerably less time with his Hindi tutor than his father requested, but did not deny him payment for his lost time.

"Soon we will be truly alone," he assured her. "Though in a very small room on a rocking ship, I regret."

"Neither of us have traveled, so we do not yet know the horrors," she replied. "Perhaps we will find them exciting instead."

"Or I will just have to keep you distracted," Edmund said, and kissed her. With Julia in his arms, Lucy Hartford was utterly forgotten except in passing reference, and everything he remembered about her, even during their honeymoon, was but a pale memory to be discarded. He could not have imagined the happiness that she brought him despite several feverish dreams between their meeting and their marriage, and he made his best attempt to return the fever with vehement devotion.

They did stop long enough to talk, sometimes until the sun was up and it was time for breakfast before sleeping again. Julia told him about her childhood, and fond memories of her father. With some prodding she told him of her difficulties when her father became ill. She had fought his desire to push her into society to secure her future before his death and her own desire to spend as much time caring for him as possible, so when Mr. Wright appeared, she was tired and desperate for an easy solution. Edmund found no fault in her remembering the kindness of her former husband in the early, albeit passionless days of their marriage, as Mr. Wright clearly was no threat to either of them now or their devotion to each other.

Julia asked her husband if he would prefer she wear jewelry gifted to her by him in place of the bracelet from her father, and his response was adamantly to the negative. "You love it, and so I love to see you wear it. Do what pleases you, Mrs. Bingley."

She giggled when he called her that, something that could not yet be done in public, and still remained so private and intimate because of it. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

Edmund told her about his life. He talked to her now with perspective about his closed, self-obsessed world, created by his insecurities of being not as kind as his father or wise as his sisters, and being the younger son, and all that society brought with it despite his father's own leanings to treat him equally. He was jealous of Georgie's strength, Charles' easy nature, and Eliza's sweetness. Julia told him bluntly that he did not see his own positive qualities, and in retrospect, he agreed.

"You are a good man. Intelligent, thoughtful, kind – you do not need to be any of your siblings," she said. "In fact, I find you the very best of men."

"You flatter me."

"My motive is a bit ulterior," she said, dragging him towards her, and he answered with a sly grin.

For three weeks they lingered in London, free of all societal duties, though they did devote more of the last week to preparing for their trip. Fortunately, they were informed that most of what they would need in India would be available there. The only difficulty was being administered several vaccines by George, who warned them that there would be some immediate ill effects that would pass, but the vaccines were considered well worth the risk. Edmund's fever was worse than Julia's, but neither case was deemed life-threatening, and after three days of lying together - this time not in congress, just exhaustion – they showed encouraging signs. By the end of the week they were recovered, and invited George and Cynthia over for dinner. Cynthia was in Confinement, but the offer could not be reversed because Julia would still be Miss Richmond for the evening in any other house, so she came instead to them.

"You look well," she said to Edmund. "Marriage has been good to you."

"They are much recovered," George said, referring to their medical condition while she was talking more generally.

Julia was eager to meet Cynthia Wickham since she hadn't met her at the wedding. "I wish you all the best," she said. "I have heard so much about you." Edmund praised her intelligence, saying she was very well-read and therefore suited to George. Julia was not untutored, and in fact had whiled away many hours in Somerset reading when she ran out of things to say to Albert, so the conversation over dinner was not so much about India and more about literature.

The next day, they were surprised with a gift – in addition to the one from the wedding – of several books. It arrived at their door already packaged for a trip, with the list of titles attached, all medieval works Julia had expressed interest in the night before. She wrote a quick note of thanks, one of her last. The final day was consumed with letter writing to thank her many new relatives for their gifts, a task she shared with Edmund, and they signed both their names to each one and closed the letters with the Bingley seal.

Despite the advice to get plenty of rest, on the morning of their departure they were without much sleep, having spent the night enjoying their last night in a steady bed by testing to see exactly how steady it could remain. George Wickham and Isabella Turner saw their carriage off for the docks in Dover, with George's words of medical advice and Isabel's hugs.

"Be good to her," she whispered to Edmund.

"I will."

"And let her be good to you."

He smiled. "I will."

With their final goodbyes done, Edmund took his wife's hand and guided her along the unsteady ramp to the ship. She had never been over water before, but with his touch she was secure, and waved goodbye to England with no regrets about the life she left behind in favor of the one in her present and future.

"Are you scared?" he said as he put his arm around her. From his voice, he was a little apprehensive about the length of the trip and the unknown depths of the sea.

She only answered, "Not a bit."

*******************************************

"You are late," was the first thing out of Paul's mouth as Charles climbed out of the carriage. Paul stood in the doorway, and Charles nearly pushed him inside, out of the view of the servants rushing to unburden the heavy carriage.

His first response was a kiss, which soothed Paul's obviously frazzled nerves considerably. "I know." His voice was now a bit huskier. "I'm sorry. My family was not eager to release me."

"Were they so terrible?"

"Only in a certain way that might have been pleasant had I not been missing someone." To which, Paul smiled. "Believe it or not, my mother sends her regards."

"And your father?"

"He does not send his regards, but I suspect you will accept his money all the same."

"People have different ways of expressing themselves," Paul said. "And your father's method, I certainly cannot disagree with. My G-d." He could see when he stepped to the window all the things they were unloading. "They already gifted us the house."

"My mother and sister had some opinions about furnishing it."

"That I can see." Paul grinned like a boy on his birthday, and with a nod from Charles, ran to the carriage to see all that was to at least partially be his.

*******************************************

At the beginning of the fall of 1835, as far as Mother Nature was concerned, summer was still going strong and the heat in Town was near unbearable. When the Maddoxes returned to Chesterton from Derbyshire, Emily and Jordan returned to their house in Cambridge, but Frederick and Lady Heather remained with Danny and their parents at the house in Chesterton, where it was cooler. Stewart Maddox was at the age where he preferred to be making trouble, and it was better to do it outdoors than on the grimy streets of London. That Frederick was constantly chasing after his son was of endless amusement to both his parents, who did nothing to disguise this, much to his chagrin.

Dr. Maddox felt little necessity for disguise, and one day simply pulled his son aside when they were sitting on the patio and said, "Whoever it is, don't get her with child."

Danny was a little lost, trying to decipher how disappointed his father was by the tone of voice. Dr. Maddox sounded stern, but fair and not altogether unsurprised. "Father – "

"I'm not blind," he said, then chuckled. "Well, I am, but that is beside the point. I cannot expect you to be solitary all your life, but I expect you to be discreet, and I expect you to be responsible."

"I will." Danny corrected himself. "I am."

"Good." His father sounded relieved, and turned away to speak to their mother on the subject of an upcoming event at Cambridge, and that was the end of the matter.

The truth was Danny was not immediately concerned with the prospect. He saw Mirela almost every day, except Sunday, when it would have made him later for church, or if he had another appointment, and he always told her if he did. Despite this, he had touched her only when she offered her hand to help him rise, and the few times she guided him through an unfamiliar part of the forest. Though the feeling of her arm and his colliding made him more unsteady and not less, they had not made the natural and almost logical progression to intimacy.

He was not a monk, but his few experiences since his return from Japan had been brief, largely without emotional attachment of any kind, and far and few between. Still, his voluntary celibacy as of late was starting to nag at him. If Charles Bingley III could be now openly passionate in the most unholy of ways, why couldn't he indulge himself? A trip to Town and a Molly House would have been the easiest solution, but he was not so inclined. Nor, frustratingly, was he inclined to escalate things with Mirela. He was willing to take things one day at a time, but that was often because he was without a larger plan.

He could not marry Mirela. His mother would have quite more than a fit, and his father already lost enough sleep over him. Perhaps more concerning, he doubted Mirela would marry him. He was aware of the gypsies' strong feelings towards intermarriage with the gaje, and she was strong enough in her identity that she refused to enter the workhouse with her family, choosing a life of solitude, desperation, and near starvation over English society. He could not ask something of her that was against her character, not until he knew her better. She remained, despite their long conversations, as mysterious to him as he seemed to be to her. He told her of his travels, she talked of the gypsy traditions he knew so little about, but of their childhoods, there was unexplored territory. After Danny established his visits were not with the expectation of payment through intimacy, she backed away from him. Their mutual respect for each other was pleasant, but ultimately frustrating.

When Danny meditated, instead of clearing his mind, he found himself assaulted with images of what she might look like, and he could not banish them. Even worse, none of them rang true. He was, perhaps for the first time since his return to England, upset that they never would.

*******************************************

If the Bingleys were feeling the pain of an empty home when the Darcys enjoyed the presence of two, often three children, this pain was briefly exacerbated when Eliza and Matthew Turner announced they were planning a trip to France. Charles and Jane were then relieved and thrilled to hear that they would be entrusted with their grandson Elliot, who would be separated from his parents for the first time. The Turners hugged and kissed their son until he stopped crying, then made for an abrupt trip to Paris.

The visit was only a few weeks. Hardly enough time to see Paris, but it was not their main object. Charles joined them, and the twins were reunited as he showed them around town. He knew the best restaurants, the best theaters, and all of the sights by heart from previous travels.

At one dinner in the inn, Paul joined them. He seemed to the Turners a sweet man, though overly polite to make up for how nervous he really was. Eliza knew Paul was in Paris as well at least part of the time Charles was there, but he was not physically present, nor was there a visit to the house on the coast, however often it was inquired about or described. Matthew said, late at night in their room when he had a few drinks in him, that some things were better left a mystery, and as eager as she was to share in her brother's life, she agreed.

One thing they did decide on was a gift. Paul mentioned he used to play pianoforte as a child, and abruptly ended that line of conversation. The following night, Charles took them to the orchestra, and in their box, Eliza pried the truth out of him.

"Paul loves music, particularly the piano," he said. "Sadly he cannot play for me. His parents saw fit to halt that activity when he showed too much enthusiasm. He was to inherit, not be a professional musician. He insists he is quite out of practice and will not even approach the keys."

"You must remedy this immediately," she insisted, being the most accomplished pianist of the family. "You must buy him a pianoforte that is too fine not to constantly be played."

"I am supposed to be at least a bit economical in my expenditures."

"Tosh! We can see to that."

"You cannot. You bought us a lovely painting."

"Are you two going to argue or listen to the music?" Matthew grumbled, and they whispered the rest of the conversation, agreeing at the end to split the expense.

They spent the next day shopping for a pianoforte until they found the perfect one, happily unaware of what was happening in Derbyshire.

*******************************************

"You would feel the same," Bingley said, balancing his grandson Elliot on his knee with one arm and finishing off his letter with another.

"He will only be gone the year," Darcy said, referring to Edmund. Charles' situation was a bit more permanent. "Do you really intend to visit them?"

"In time. They will hardly wish our intrusion so soon. Besides, I've been trying to get Jane to go for years."

"If you close Kirkland, I will not take your animal for you, whatever you promise me in return. You will have to give him to someone less responsible."

"Monkey is coming with us," Bingley said, and put the letter aside for the servant to powder it and heat the wax. Elliot was quiet, chewing on his teething ring. "Perhaps he would like to go home."

"Do not tell me you've asked him."

"He hasn't responded in a comprehensible way."

Darcy said more somberly, "How long do monkeys live?"

"It varies, but not too much longer. But longer than dogs." He grinned mischievously. "Maybe it would be a good animal for our grandson."

"Elliot?"

"Brian. He loves animals."

"As his last name is indelibly Darcy and not Bingley, all I can say is that I will have a strong word on the matter."

"You would anyway."

Darcy just sipped his tea as Bingley focused on sealing and posting the letter. He then called for Elliot's nurse and had her carry him for his afternoon nap. It was too hot to be inside, so they went out onto the veranda, where a massive Indian umbrella provided shade. With the new plumbing came a better ice fridge, and they could have ice in their drinks even in the unusually hot autumn. Bingley read his letters, and Darcy perused the newspaper. "They say the king is ill again."

"Seriously?"

"It does not say."

"And we no longer have our royal connection."

"The doctor never told us anything."

Bingley frowned. "I know. How frustrating. Nonetheless, he must be nearing seventy. I wonder if he will recover this time."

"This will make four monarchs we've seen in our lifetime."

"Did you ever see the others, or is Princess Victoria the only one?"

Darcy looked up from his paper, removing his spectacles when the sun hit them too hard. "I saw George the Third as a child. There was a public celebration of the birth of Princess Amelia, and I must have been nine or ten. My father brought me to Town – I remember he said he used to love these sorts of things when he was a child, and regretted that he was so busy at Pemberley and did not partake in life in Town. He did not want me to miss the experience, he said. We were at the parade and I was eating my first ice cream when the king appeared, and I remember only two things beyond that. The first was that he wasn't wearing his crown, and I was under the impression that kings wore them all the time, even to bed. The second was that Mrs. Reynolds was very upset that at the sight of the king, I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and got chocolate all over my jacket. And now you have heard the silliest story you will ever hear from me and I must make you swear never to tell it."

"I will add it to the list of ridiculous stories I must take to the grave. Which is getting to be quite a long list."

"So it is."

*******************************************

Since most of the family was currently at Pemberley with all four Darcy children and grandchildren in residence, dinner was usually there, and Bingley arrived just in time. They had only one guest, the Vicar of Lambton. Over his increasing tenure, he proved himself to be not only a good minister but a thoughtful, kind-hearted young man, devoting himself to charity work in his spare time despite his profession, and therefore often crossing paths with the Darcy women as they went about their own work visiting sick tenants and donating to the poor boxes. He rented out his attic to his friend from Cambridge, Mr. Hyde, for a little extra money. Mr. Hyde was an unemployed but ordained minister, but Mr. Emerson never nominated his friend for the curate position, and they had long come to the conclusion that Mr. Hyde must have some other situation pending and would not want something as lowly as a curacy. Beyond that, they knew Thomas Emerson was prone to periods of melancholy and would work for hours in his garden, to the expense of his health on a few occasions when the sun was too strong and he was too modest to remove his black coat.

A little pity for the poor man meant he was on occasion invited to Pemberley for dinner. Darcy was careful about inviting any eligible, fortuneless young men to his table with two available daughters even if Sarah had sworn off marriage and children altogether and Cassandra had no interest in a man as serious as Mr. Emerson, but Elizabeth pressed him. Knowing it was out of the goodness of his wife's character, Darcy agreed, and Mr. Emerson came from time to time. Such was one of those nights. It was a relaxed atmosphere with so much family at the table, and he spoke little, but was happy to join the gentleman in the library afterwards for port. His real motive was quickly revealed – he wanted to borrow some books. They were all too easily lent, and they returned to the women. Anne and Sarah played a duet but Cassandra, ever moody, refused to sing. After a long, hot day Mr. Emerson took his leave, the Bingleys returned to Kirkland, and the Darcys retired for the night.

*******************************************

Despite the quiet of night, all was not well with the master of Pemberley. Darcy was accustomed to unexplained nights of restlessness and lost hours of sleep, something he increasingly made up by napping during the day, but he had been doing well for several weeks and would not describe the feeling that woke him up as that of mere insomnia. It was terror.

"What is it?" Elizabeth did not pick her head up from the pillow, but she was awake, if only barely.

"Nothing."

"What did you dream?"

He gave her a weary smile. "I was not dreaming. If I was, I do not remember it." He took her offered hand and kissed it. "Go back to sleep."

"Are you sure?"

"I will be fine." He got out of bed, in no mood to toss and turn and further disturb his wife. When he could not sleep, he liked to walk the halls of Pemberley, an old habit from when he had hounds that were as restless as he was. Darcy put on a robe and took a candlestick. "I will return shortly." His smile seemed to reassure her, and she turned over and went back to sleep.

He was not alone. He saw the movement cross his path suspiciously, but he did not hurry to follow. Mala had her favorite hiding places and they were not far and not good for hiding. One did not hide from the master of Pemberley. "Mahakala," he said, and the dog stopped chewing on the bone to look up at him, her eyes full of guilt as they glittered in the candlelight. "Are you supposed to be outside? I cannot remember." He knelt down and looked at the bone, a leftover from dinner that was practically picked clean already. She was just picking up on the scent of food and was too energetic to be still, even at this hour. "Come. There's better entertainment for you, I'm sure."

Despite her age, she was responsive to his commands, probably more out of curiosity than comprehension. She ran circles around him when he paused, but otherwise followed. "I used to have my own dogs, you know. Arthur and Guinevere. I named them as a boy, which accounts for their ridiculous assignments, and the servants just called them King and Queen. They died of old age shortly after my marriage. Elizabeth was so understanding." She did not taunt him for how unusually emotional he was when Arthur gave up the will to live few weeks after his queen died. Until the birth of Geoffrey, it was the first time in their marriage that he showed any tears.

He wanted to walk the Great Hall, with all of the portraits looking down on him, but Mala would not follow. She stopped at the turn and sat down, whining. "Mala." But when he approached, she bit his robe and began to pull. "Mahakala, no!"

She disengaged but still whined, and ran off towards the kitchen. He grumbled and followed her.

The cooks were not in the kitchen, but someone was. "Cassandra!"

Cassandra Darcy picked her head up from the pot she was bent over, wiping her face as she did. "Papa!"

"You're ill! I will call – "

"No!" She discarded the rag and ran to him. "You must not. They will not believe me."

"Believe you about what?"

"Papa, I am fine. Can you let this go? For me?"

Darcy was flummoxed. "Let what? Cassie, you must see a doctor right away."

Her attempt at pleading with him turned just as quickly to anger. "You have to know everything. You have to lock me up. You would never understand." She backed away. "You drove me to this!" With that, she ran for the backdoor, and despite her slippers, she was faster than him.

"Cassandra!" But by the time he made it to the door, she was gone, into the blackness of night and the secrecy the woods offered her. He rang the bell to wake the servants and set the candlestick down.

It was only then that he noticed Mala, obediently sitting next to the trail of blood that led from the pot to the door.

.... Next Chapter - The Hunt


	32. The Hunt

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 32 – The Hunt

Never was such an alarm raised so quickly at Pemberley by one person. He threw open the door to the servants' quarters. "I need men outside, now."

"Sir?" One of the gardeners was the first to respond, wearing only his nightshirt and breeches.

"Cassandra is ill and out of her head. She's gone to the woods somewhere, just now, and she's wounded. I want every able man up and out the door. _Now_."

He did not waste another moment with them. They would understand. As fast as his legs could take him he climbed the great staircase and ran to Elizabeth's bedchambers. She'd heard the bell, but was still in a daze of sleep when he shoved the door open, breathing heavily from the exertion. "What is it?"

"Cassandra is ill. And ... wounded or something. I couldn't see. She ran out the door."

"What? Why?"

"I don't know – she didn't explain."

Elizabeth threw on her robe, which would do for the moment. "Her maid should know something. Is she not awake? I will see."

Darcy nodded and proceeded immediately to Geoffrey's chambers, knocking heavily on the entrance to the bedchamber. "Geoffrey!" He knew his son had probably not heard the bell, but he would not barge into his son and daughter-in-law's quarters. Some propriety had to be maintained. "Open this door."

It was Geoffrey who opened it. He was rubbing his eyes. "Georgie just shook me. What is it?"

"Your sister just ran out the door. Where's Georgiana?"

"What? Who?"

"Cassandra. She was ill and she ran away from me when I tried to inquire. Where is my niece?"

"Here," Georgie said, looking more awake as she stepped into view in the doorway. "Uncle Darcy."

"Cassandra ran into the woods after I found her ill in the kitchen. She's bleeding and I don't know where she went, only that she's out of her mind." He added, very definitively, "I need you to find her."

"Alright," was her response, and she disappeared back behind the door.

Feeling a bit guilty, Darcy said to his son, "I need you, too."

Of course, Geoffrey understood. "I know. I'll dress. Did you tell Mother?"

"She will handle your sisters. And your nurse – please tell her not to let the children out of the Nursery if they hear anything."

Geoffrey looked down at Mala, who was licking his bare toes. "Of course."

*******************************************

While Darcy roused the house, as he was so good at doing that, Elizabeth could hear his commands even with her massive door closed, she tied her robe, put a shawl for good measure, and went straight to Cassandra's chambers. Darcy's confused, agitated explanation would be followed by a longer one when he had time, and the time was not now.

Anne was already there. "I heard something about Cassie leaving."

"Have you seen Sarah? Rouse her, and bring her in," Elizabeth said as she opened the door to the sitting room, then the side door. Cassie's lady-maid, a woman Cassandra's age named Madeline was still sleeping soundly. "Madeline! Get up!" Her voice was unusually harsh but she did not think of apologizing. If Cassandra was keeping secrets, Madeline would know them.

"What is it – Mrs. Darcy!" Though hardly unclothed, she instinctively grabbed her sheets and brought them up to protect her. "Whatever is the matter?"

"Whatever is the matter? You are without your mistress, for Cassandra has fled." It was still very dark, but Elizabeth could see the look on the girl's face as she squinted. It was not complete surprise. "I expect you dressed and your explanation prepared in five minutes." With that, she slammed the door shut, and went to the connecting room to lock the other entrance. Her sympathies did not extend very far at that moment.

Back in the bedchamber, her own maid was waiting. "Mrs. Darcy, please." She offered her tea, but she had no stomach for anything at the moment, even tea. "Would you like milk? There is – "

Elizabeth looked around, and picked up one of the bottles on the bed stand. "What is this?"

Her maid opened the bottle and took a deep sniff, and coughed. "Whatever it is, tis not perfume, marm."

Anne entered, with Sarah. Elizabeth did not mince words. "Did your sister tell you she was sick?"

"Cassie's sick?" Sarah's answer revealed how little she knew, which was no more than them. Nor could she identify the bottles, which they began to sort. They were labeled only by color, and mixed among tonics and rose water, normal things to have at a bedside.

Most of them were empty, but one still had some liquid in it, and Elizabeth held it up as Madeline entered. The lady-maid shrieked and collapsed into the chair, already crying. "She said not to ask. She said she wouldn't take too much. She said she would have me fired, Mr. Darcy would have me fired –"

She wasn't that far wrong. "What is this, Madeline?"

"It's quinine, Mrs. Darcy. I knew the smell. My sister used to take it."

"For what ailment?"

"She – she didn't want to get with child!" She started wailing, but fortunately Georgie was nowhere to be found, because Elizabeth was seriously tempted for the first time in her life to strike a woman but lacked the will to do so. "My sister, I mean."

"But there's no other reason to drink this, is there?" She could not bear to hear it confirmed, but she had to. "Who is he?"

"I don't know. I swear to G-d I don't know. I don't know." She just kept shaking her head. She trembled when they came nearer. Sarah offered a chair up so her mother could sit down opposite the hysterical maid. "She didn't tell me a name."

"Are there letters?"

"Not by post. Miss Cassandra said, her father already has the post first, so she can hardly use it. If she has letters, I don't know where – she didn't tell me."

"But you knew."

"I told her not to. She went out – I think it started sometime last summer, when she was in such a huff over the Season."

"Mama," Sarah said, "After London was when the Vicar was chosen."

The calendar did match, and he was the only eligible bachelor with access to the Darcy sisters. But Mr. Emerson? Not that the name in particular mattered now, only the location of the person. She called her own lady-maid. "Fetch Mr. Darcy."

*******************************************

Georgie dressed, covered her hair so it was not so obvious and striking, kissed her husband on the cheek, and left. She knew he was embarrassed about not hearing the alarm, but she didn't mention it, as it was better to let these things go.

He would go out with the huntsmen to search the woods. There was already a team assembled in the yard behind the kitchen door, and she passed them by, choosing another exit. On the way, she hid in the shadows long enough to see the stain in the kitchen and the remains in the pot, which had not yet been scrubbed out.

Her path, barefoot, took her into the drawing room, where the window opened and she leapt onto the soft grass. She put on her geta and started running, circling around the hunters before entering the woods. There was no more blood to be found, and the morning mist further obscured her vision, but it would be light enough soon to see clearly. Until then, the moonlight guided her.

Cassandra wouldn't go into the woods – not without a purpose, and the only purpose Georgie could think of was losing her father and covering her trail, easier to do surrounded by trees than on the road. She could not expect to hide there for long, and if she was only in a robe, she wouldn't want to. She would be soaked by now just from the mist and dew. No, she would stay on a less obvious path than the main one, but her ultimate object had to be a house, a tavern, maybe even Lambton. She would go to safety in civilization.

Georgie considered it as she knelt in the clearing, looking for fresh tracks. There was quite a lot of blood on the kitchen floor, and Cassandra had lost her stomach several times, enough to have to leave her chambers and find another location to dispose of her stomach's contents. If she was only taking something to prevent a child, which could bring on courses – and on this matter Georgie had some expertise – it would only be a few drops.

Of course a stupid doctor, or a bribed doctor, might call it an upset stomach and her courses – if it wasn't too obvious. The revelation struck her so hard she felt some uneasiness of her own in the form of feeling ill.

Cassandra had probably miscarried.

It would explain her symptoms and her irrational behavior. It would explain perfectly her sudden need to flee from her father and his demands for an explanation. However concerned he would have initially been for her health, it would have given way to anger and disappointment. He undoubtedly felt that when Geoffrey announced they were marrying and they had been engaged for months. Cassandra was not even being courted. They did not even have the name of a man who would be interested in her. Of course, one had been at the table last night, but Georgie knew he was interested in Sarah, and even then, it was a mild inclination. He was probably still deciding if or how to act upon it.

Running from her father's wrath, where would Cassandra turn? Into the arms of her lover, if they didn't catch her before she found him. And then a wedding at the end of the barrel of Darcy's gun? (or at the emptying of Darcy's wallet?) Was that what Cassandra really wanted?

No. She was not a little girl and she made decisions, but she was doing them alone, and she was afraid. Discovering she was pregnant, she was terrified. She made a bad decision, and to make it worse, was caught by the very man she most sought to avoid. So she ran.

The only question was how long she would run.

*******************************************

Thomas Emerson, the Vicar of Lambton, lived well within the confines of his parish. He lived only a few yards away from town proper, in a house that for generations had a similar purpose, and when he looked up from his gardening to greet his guests, he did not expect an angry Mr. Darcy, much less an angry Mr. Darcy, Mr. Geoffrey Darcy, Mr. Bingley, and their men behind them. Several of the men had guns. One of them was Darcy. "Where is Cassandra?"

"Cassandra Darcy?" As if there could be any other Cassandra in this situation. "I ... I haven't seen her today. I have not seen her since last night."

Darcy cocked his rifle.

"Since I left the house! You saw me go! Please, Mr. Darcy I have no idea – "

"Perhaps we should take this inside," Geoffrey suggested.

"Perhaps." Darcy did lower his gun long enough to grab Mr. Emerson and drag him into his own house. They left their men outside, though three men with a rifle were enough to fray Mr. Emerson's already tender nerves.

"Mr. Emerson, I see no reason now to hide that my daughter is missing, and we believe at the hands of some man she previously may have had contact with," Mr. Darcy said. "Since you are the only candidate – "

"Oh G-d. Oh, sweet, merciful G-d. What have I done?"

Mr. Bingley frowned. "What have you done, Mr. Emerson?"

"Trenton. He's gone – he hasn't been home since last night, or perhaps he was home, and left very early this morning. I thought I heard something, but when I woke he had left, and his bed was still unmade, so I thought – "

"The man who rents the room. He wants the Curacy," Geoffrey came to the conclusion first. "What is his name?"

Mr. Darcy's voice was deadly. "Hyde. Mr. Hyde. Your old school chum, is he not?"

"He promised me he would be on his best behavior, that his University days were behind him. I believed him! He was so sincere and I felt obligated out of Christian charity – "

Mr. Darcy raised his rifle again and pressed it against Emerson's chest. "You brought a known rake into the community, even promoted him for the Curacy – "

"I didn't. I told him he could rent the room, because I needed the money for my sister, but it ended there. He asked me to put his name forward and despite his ordination and his claims of reform I could not." He looked down at the gun, and up at the men, especially Darcy. "Since my life is so easily dispatched, I might as well tell you that I have been lying in one respect, in that I have a past ... in University. Nothing serious, no women violated, no laws broken – but Trenton and I shared a dorm, and he knew everything, even that blasted party, and he came here and threatened to expose me to everyone for something – someone who was no longer me. He needed to lay low, and offered to pay the rent."

Geoffrey was the most understanding, at least in tone. "He blackmailed you?"

"Yes. Please believe me when I say I have done everything in my power to act as a man of G-d, but some things seem beyond my control, and in some ways I have acted unwisely and in my own interests. Please forgive me."

"Forgive you!" At least Mr. Darcy lowered his rifle again. He seemed too ready to shoot anyone if it would bring his daughter back. "You knowingly brought a man into this community of such low moral character, you overlooked his dalliances – "

"If I knew the women he went to see were of any moral character – certainly, if they were anyone I knew, I would have stopped him immediately. I specifically told him not to get involved with anyone of consequence, or anyone at all if he could manage it." Mr. Emerson swallowed. "I swear it. If I had seen or heard a peep of anything concerning your daughter, Mr. Darcy – either of your daughters – you would have been the first to know, I swear it!"

"Shall I inquire as to with what material he was blackmailing you with?"

"We all have stories that we would rather our future acquaintances and employers rather not know. Spare me."

"He has not been found guilty of anything yet, Darcy," Mr. Bingley said. "We do not even know if there is any real connection between Mr. Hyde and Cassandra's disappearance, only that Mr. Hyde is previously known to have a suspicious character."

"By all means, take your liberties with Mr. Hyde's room. If anything, perhaps it will convince him to leave me alone," Emerson offered.

He must have really looked the poor fool, because Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley went upstairs, leaving Geoffrey and the rifle with him. Geoffrey did not hover over him as his father did, or threaten him. "We are just looking for my sister. We believe she is some distress."

"Believe me when I say I will help you in any way that I can, and I sincerely hope Trenton is not connected, and that I have not brought this terror into your lives."

Geoffrey Darcy was older than him, but not by much. He did not live full-time at Pemberley, but he was there a good third of the year, and especially at holidays, so they saw each other, and as of late had a few conversations. The heir to Pemberley was almost as universally loved as his father for being a kind and fair man, and there was some story about a brave encounter with bandits that left him partially deaf, but he'd never gotten the full story. Thomas had a healthy respect for the man, looked to him almost as friend because of their ages, and Geoffrey did not abandon him in that now, or look on him with any disgust. _If he only knew_, Emerson thought – and he'd come so close, with that business with Charles Bingley III, to being discovered. He had wronged Charles by writing his sister, but he had to protect her, and while he would not take it back, Charles' appearance at the wedding briefly terrified him. But like a good fellow in unnatural acts of man, Charles said nothing. It was only Trenton Hyde – who only knew the story of the party, and regularly derided his friend for his disgusting habits – who took advantage of him. Now it was clear that Hyde had come to hide from something, and maybe even take advantage of a young woman with a large dowry and a father who would do anything to cover up a scandal.

But Geoffrey did not threaten and he did not judge. He sat down, the rifle in his lap, and removed what looked like an earpiece. "My father can jump to conclusions when he believes time is of the essence – which it is."

"Let us hope his conclusions are wrong, and your sister is easily found."

"When you are cleared of all wrongdoing and this is set aright, he will be forgiving, and he will be apologetic. When he is not focused on Cassandra he will know to set things right with you."

Thomas simply assumed he would lose his job over this; Geoffrey's words gave him hope. "Thank you."

That hope faded when Darcy came back down the stairs, holding a jewelry box clearly feminine and expensive. "Mr. Emerson, please tell us everything you know about your good friend Mr. Hyde."

.... Next Chapter - Mr. Emerson and Mr. Hyde


	33. Mr Emerson and Mr Hyde

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 33 - Mr. Emerson and Mr. Hyde

Though Georgie spent nearly all day searching, she knew within an hour that it was futile. Cassandra was not the type to truly succeed at hiding herself in the woods, so if she was not immediately found, she was probably back in civilization, hiding at an inn or a house. Georgie did her sweep anyway because she knew others were depending on her, and she was reluctant to return with no answer and heavy suspicions that when the answers did emerge, no one would want to hear them. She cooled herself by wetting the cloth that covered her hair, but finally emerged in the late heat of the day, exhausted and filthy, and without a scrap of evidence of Cassandra's movements to show for it.

She paused by the laundry lines, removing her sandals and grabbing a clean towel. Mala came running up to her, followed by Alison. "Mama."

"Alison. Where are your brothers?"

"In the Nursery, but Nurse said I could go outside and wait for you if I stayed in sight. And Mala had to go out." She picked up the puppy, who was panting. "Did you know she found Cassandra this morning? She led Grandpapa to her when she was sick."

"She did?" Georgie scratched behind the puppy's ears. "Good girl." She did not yet know what they had told Alison, so she opened with a more neutral question. "Where is your father?"

"He came home for lunch and then they went out again, and he just came back from Lambton, and they still didn't find her. Why did Aunt Cassie run away?"

"She was scared."

"Of what?"

"I don't truly know." It was not an entirely honest answer, but it was good enough. "Sometimes we do irrational things when we're frightened. Everyone does."

"Even you?"

"Your father would say I get _very_ irrational." Georgie removed the sword from her shoulder strap and carried it with her geta as they walked back to the house. "He is much better at staying calm."

"I don't think he's very calm now." Alison looked up at her. "Should I do something?"

"This one's not for you, Ali-chan," she said, "but you can watch over your brothers and cousins for us. Nurse will help you. It's a big responsibility. Do you think you can do that for me?"

Alison was eager to please. "Yes."

"That would be very admirable of you. And very grown-up." They took the route through the chapel, up the servant stairs, and quietly made their way through the hall. That did not prevent them from running head on into Darcy. They curtseyed, and Alison scurried off at her mother's gesture.

"You did not find her?" His voice was emotional, but he did not sound unsurprised.

Georgie bowed her head. "I'm sorry, Uncle. I don't believe she would hide too long in the woods anyway."

"She's run off with her lover, so she is not alone." He smiled sadly at that. He looked so lost. "But they are not hiding in the woods then. We must expand the search as quickly as possible. Thank you, Georgiana."

"Of course, Uncle Darcy."

He nodded and continued on his way, not in the mood for other formalities. In the distance she could hear her aunt crying, but that was not her destination. Instead she returned to her chambers and rang for a bath. She found Geoffrey in the bedchamber, his coat opened, a map strewn lazily across the writing table. He was not looking at it. He did smile a little when she entered. "Georgie."

She kissed him on the head. "Where did you go?"

"To Mr. Emerson's. It seems he was keeping a secret from us, one greater than he knew. You know his friend, Mr. Hyde? The one who applied for the Curacy but did not receive it or some nonsense?"

She remembered a blond fellow from church. "Yes."

"The man is a rake, and a thief it seems. He was paying for the room at his old University friend's house, but also on the condition that he did not reveal to us one of Mr. Emerson's college stories, which would apparently not reflect well on his behavior as a younger man, and cause him to possibly lose his living. Mr. Hyde was the sort of friend who blackmails his friends into complacency, but Mr. Emerson claims that he did not know the extent of it, or that Hyde had insinuated himself with Cassandra. We found one of her jewelry boxes in Hyde's room." The last sentence gave him great pain to say and she sat on the ottoman and took his hand.

"Do you believe him? The Vicar?"

"I do. Though my judgment is clouded by emotion today, I think what I thought yesterday, that he is a good man, whatever his past is, and he has offered to make amends by helping us track down his former friend."

"He didn't say what it was – the college tale."

"My father asked and he begged him not to pry. With a gun to his chest he pleaded with him, and realizing it was tangential to our mission, Father chose to leave him be on that matter." Geoffrey looked away. He could not meet her eyes. "They found ... what was it, quinine in her room. Bottle and bottles of it. Most of them empty. Her abigail pleaded some amount of ignorance, as I am to understand it. Not that it will save her job."

"We know from the evidence she left that Cassie is not with child, and despite her activities, made every effort to keep it that way. So this was no romantic elopement. It was a poor decision made in haste, and if she is truly ill, she will have to see a doctor and come home."

"I hope that is true."

Georgie patted his hand. "She panicked, as I panicked."

"It was different."

"But I still panicked at even the prospect and I made myself ill, but there were no lasting effects. When she stops running, she will be found, if not before."

"She believes Father will not accept her."

"But she knows your mother will."

"His censure is harsh, Georgie. You know that. Not that he said a word against her today."

"Of course he didn't." Georgie turned her head as her maid entered to indicate the bath was almost ready. "Perhaps you would prefer to speak with a wife who smells better. I must bathe."

"If you must," Geoffrey said. "I do not have a preference."

*******************************************

"She could be in Ireland right now."

"Darcy." Elizabeth sat on their bed and patted the comforter as he stared out the window. "You must rest. You will go later tonight making plans, I know it."

"Ireland. Or France, by morning."

"She will not go to France. She is not in love and carrying his child. She is frightened and ashamed."

Darcy turned and sighed. He was tired. It was in his posture and in his eyes. There were times during the course of the day when he couldn't catch his breath. Elizabeth could not bring herself to remind him that he was not the sturdy young man he used to be. He did sit, but to say, "She told me I drove her to this. Those were her last words to me."

"She was not talking sensibly. She was ill – "

"I have been harsh on her, but because I wanted to protect her. From everything. And is that not when I do the most damage to people? When I try to protect them from themselves?"

"No."

"It is so and you cannot deny it. I do not learn from my mistakes. I am a father and guardian five times over, and I still do not deserve the title."

Elizabeth took her time with Jane, while Darcy was gone, to cry. She did not know he would locate Cassandra, or that Georgie would not find her in the woods, but because of what happened in the morning. She cried because her daughter was sick and she could not help her. She cried because her daughter had lied and tricked her way into disaster because she must have thought it was the only way to go. She did that on Jane's shoulder so she could be strong when Darcy returned and needed hers. That was her duty as his wife, and she was the only one who could do it.

"Darcy," she repeated, "my love, you must rest. Just a little, before dinner. All the letters have been sent, and your man is taking care of everything else for the time being. Do it for Cassandra."

At the name his expression melted into despair in front of her, at least in his eyes, and then he did agree to be helped out of his waistcoat. He was so tired, so emotionally ragged, that the simplest task did not come easy to him, and she removed his boots for him and put his coat over the chair for Mr. Reed to collect, and when he fell on the bed she covered him.

"Lizzy," he called out as she went to put away his coat. "Come." In an almost mocking tone he said, "You must rest." But he was also perfectly serious, and she knew it.

She found the invitation difficult for all the reasons he did, but she could not refuse him. She laid beside him, he unlaced her bodice for her, and she slipped it off and then into his waiting arms, and she slept.

*******************************************

"She wouldn't have done this," Sarah said over her meal with Anne. Everyone was inclined to take food in their rooms, finding themselves exhausted from the long day and preparing for the long night of further searching before the trail went completely cold. "She would have told me if we were closer. If I did not admonish her for her behavior."

"That's not true and you know it," Anne replied. "You cannot blame yourself for her choices."

"I could have had a hint of it – "

"She hid from you as well as she did from anyone else. We are all equally to blame, and yet she is still responsible for her own choices." Anne added, "She will be found. I'm sure of it."

*******************************************

Shortly after dinner Mr. Emerson arrived with a list of notes, mainly things he knew about Mr. Hyde and places Hyde had discussed having been to. Trenton Hyde was not broke, but nor did he have a living – his father died and left him a bequest that he'd successfully gambled away most of at University. Hence his studying for and taking the exams for his ordination, and then seeking the Curacy, which would provide him with some income. He was also a skilled horseman, which was ominous, and was originally from somewhere in the north, though Mr. Emerson could not recall the name of the place, inconsequential as it was.

"We have the obvious places, now that Lambton is searched," Geoffrey said as they stood around the map spread across the desk. Only his father sat. "London. Gretna Green."

"Lord Kincaid can try there," Elizabeth said. She was one of the few women present, but this was her daughter, and no one would push her out, not even Darcy. "And he can dispatch his son to the other border towns that are less popular."

"Frederick and George are not enough to cover all of London," Darcy announced. He ruled out Dr. Maddox and Daniel II for the obvious reasons. "Mr. Maddox and Her Highness perhaps can join them."

"Your brother is close to Liverpool, is he not?" Bingley said to Darcy. "Half a day by boat, at most? And that includes the travel from his home to the ship."

"Liverpool has the train," Geoffrey said. "Someone should cover it."

Darcy made a note and crossed Grégoire's name off the list. "Mr. Emerson, does the map jog your memory?"

Emerson put his finger on the map. "I know this hardly narrows it down, but he was originally from Yorkshire."

It was a very large county, but it was very close to Derbyshire. "Did his father have an estate?"

"He never said the source of his father's income. I know there was no entail, because he has no holdings there anymore so if he had family land, he sold it."

"Hyde is a common name. Did his father have an occupation? Or money from an occupation? Did he mention some industry?"

Emerson withdrew his hand and scratched his head. He was trying his best, but coming up with little. Still, everything was something more than what they knew. He was their only solid link to Mr. Hyde, who left no notes or indications of his intentions when he departed, presumably with Cassandra. There was a small chance their departures were unrelated despite their connection (there were also several of her pins in his room), but there were no leads in other areas and until they found Hyde, they would not be satisfied. Darcy wanted him brought to justice anyway. At last the Vicar said, "He did something in medicine – his father. Not a doctor. Hyde knew a lot about salts and bathing waters. Said it was all nonsense but a good way to scam the rich."

"A spa? Like Harrogate?"

"Maybe. It does not sound unfamiliar, but I cannot say for sure. Forgive me."

"Do you have other friends who would know him, Mr. Emerson?"

He swallowed. "I am no longer in contact with any of them."

It was obvious he could offer them little more, and then was dismissed, with his apologies and promise to join them in the morning.

"I may have been a bit hard on him," Darcy said. "That said, I could not at this juncture speculate how it might have gone had I not."

*******************************************

Darcy was up late writing letters. Bingley offered to help, but as this was a personal scandal, there were few they wanted to invite to help outside the family, so Bingley's business contacts would remain for the moment untapped. He did write the Maddoxes, not specifying yet what they wanted Dr. Maddox and Lady Maddox to do.

"Caroline will probably want to come to Pemberley," he said. "She is Cassandra's godmother. She certainly will not sit idly by."

"I do not expect her to." Still, he could not think of a specific use for Dr. Maddox, and with guilt, did not request anything of him. He knew the doctor would do whatever he could, but in the matter of a search, what he could do was limited.

When the Bingleys retired, it was only Darcy and Elizabeth.

"What are you going to write the Fitzwilliams?"

"They're in Brighton, so if Cassandra appears there, they'll find her," he said. "Henry Fitzwilliam is at Cambridge. I will not take him from his studies. Yet."

She finished another letter and presented it to the servant to close up. "If she hides in Hertfordshire, Mary or Kitty will write us."

"Where is Joseph Bennet?"

"He has a position under the bishop of Bedford. It is temporary and I do not have the address – Mary will tell him for us." She did not yet reach for more paper. "There are the Bradleys."

He stopped scribbling his current letter and merely said, "There are."

"Mr. Bradley is a former officer. He can be resourceful." She pushed. "He will know whether to tell Lydia or not, and how to do it."

"You give him much credit."

"Cassandra is her niece! I must give her some credit. There have been any number of scandals in the family since their marriage and she has not said a word."

"Because she did not know of them or they involved her son."

She closed the pot of ink, slamming it on the desk. "You are being ridiculous."

"I am being cautious. If I thought Mr. Bradley would be our savior, I would not be."

"How are you to know? Who else do we have at Cheapside?" The Gardiner children were married, and Mr. Gardiner, Elizabeth's cousin, was grown and had a thriving business in Boston. "After all these years – "

"After all these years, I still will not take any liberties with the possibility of my daughter's reputation being utterly ruined.

"_Your _daughter? Did you carry your daughter around when you were in Austria? Did you feel the labor pains of _your_ daughter?"

"You are being irrational." But his voice was not the calm voice of Darcy. He was practically shouting. "She was my responsibility –"

"Was?"

"_Is_. Pardon me."

"Do you think me cold? Do you think I feel no guilt that I did not know my daughter – yes, my daughter, as well as yours – was so frustrated and scared that she made herself ill and ran when help was offered? That she took to the woods instead of coming to me? Do you think I feel no pain from that?"

"This is my fault, my responsibility. She made that very clear – "

"She also made it very clear she was not acting rationally, and that everything she has said to us in the past year is not to be believed! And she may assign blame as she chooses in an instant, but that does stop me – "

"Elizabeth, I cannot handle – " He stood. He'd lost his words. "I cannot handle these two things at once."

"I am a thing to you now? Am I an obstruction? Should I sit in my room and cry and fuss while you write all the letters with your barely legible – "

"Enough!" Now it was a shout. It was not Darcy being angry by tone, or a slight raise of voice to call attention. It was a furious, loud _order_.

Elizabeth shoved the papers to his side of the desk. "When you are done with your duties, Mr. Darcy, I will be in my chambers." She stood, and turned away from him. She did not, however, make it to the door. Her steps were slow, because she did not want to make him run, and deep inside, she wanted him to catch her, and grab her, because he would be too weak, and she had to hold his head up with her palms cupping his cheeks. "She did not mean it." Elizabeth said it because he could not speak and accuse himself, too busy swallowing all of his sobs so they were not audible, like a good gentleman ought to. Gentlemen did not wail, even when they needed to. "You cannot lay all the blame on yourself. You are not strong enough to stand it."

He did not contradict her. He grabbed her arms, but it was like grasping at something so as to not drown, not to restrain her. A prouder, properly angry at someone other than himself, less knowing Darcy would have said something in his defense, but he had her, so he did not. "Lizzy. I don't know what to do."

"We will find her."

"And then?"

"And then we will manage with whatever comes our way, just as we have always done." She wiped his tears away with her thumb, but there were too many of them. "We have always come through in the end. Scarred, and a little deaf, and a few of us are blind or missing a finger, but we are alive."

"I wanted the best for her. I _want_ the best for her."

"Because you are a good father." She lifted his face so that he was looking her straight in the eyes, though she could barely see him through her tears and she doubted it was any different for him. "If you have no faith in yourself, you are a fool, and I will suffer a fool just this once and have all the faith that is required for you. We will find our daughter, and restore her to health, and good relations, and she will stumble into happiness the same way we all do. When we least expect it."

He bowed his head. "I love you, Lizzy."

"I love you, Fitzwilliam," she said, and he didn't dare correct her.

.... Next Chapter - (no title yet)


	34. The Quest

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Huge Author's Note**: This is the missing chapter 34.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 34 - The Quest

The first day since Cassandra's flight provided them with the entertainment of a fruitless search of Lambton, Derby, and the surrounding areas. Wherever she'd gone, with or without Mr. Hyde, it was not to a local hideaway, not with so many well-informed, intimidating, and wealthy people searching for her. A search of Mr. Hyde's room, short of tearing up the floorboards, revealed nothing. His correspondences did not mention her, nor did they provide anything but the names of a few men in London, most of which he seemed to owe money. This information was relayed to the Town crowd with the fastest mail available.

After dinner, a coach arrived. It was Caroline Maddox and her son Danny. She embraced Elizabeth first, then Jane. "Daniel's stayed in town with Emily. He's using his University contacts; Trenton Hyde graduated only a few years ago." She turned to Darcy. "We have only that he is from Harrogate, in North Yorkshire.

"Does he still have a place there?"

"No one knew."

He nodded. "Thank you." Without hesitating, Darcy turned to his butler. "Saddle my horse."

"Darcy," Elizabeth said, but did not get another word in before he spoke.

"I will not sit idly by," he said. "Nothing is being accomplished here. I will go."

"_We_ will go," she said. "A carriage will get us there soon enough."

He did not fight her. He only found Geoffrey. "Stay here at Pemberley and coordinate the missives."

"Father – "

"I must go, and I must go now. It is not far." It was not more than half a day's ride.

"Take Reed."

"I will. Of course." But it didn't sound like he'd been considering it. He had little time as the carriage was assembled, and that little time was giving instructions to Geoffrey and Bingley. "If he is not there, our stay will be of short duration, except to learn something of his character."

They both nodded and kept their objections to themselves.

Twenty minutes after the arrival of the Maddox carriage, another one was loaded up and ready to depart. "Papa!" Anne came running to embrace him. "You must not go."

"We will find her," he said. "I promise."

Before Anne Jameson could say anything about making promises he could not keep, Mr. and Mrs. Darcy of Pemberley waved their goodbyes and climbed into the carriage, which burst into action with a neigh and was gone from sight within minutes, disappearing into the darkness of night.

*******************************************

"Papa is not senseless," Anne said to Sarah, who was increasingly upset. "And he has Mama with him. They will be fine."

"Harrogate is not that far, nor it is a large town," Mr. Emerson offered. "It will not take them long to search it."

"You've been?" Geoffrey asked. He'd long-since decided Thomas Emerson was no blackguard, just a bit of a fool to be maneuvered into such a position by Mr. Hyde and not to monitor his activities. But Mr. Emerson was a kind man who believed the good messages he preached, so he was not so suspicious of people by nature, even people he knew to have a past. Geoffrey wondered what his was, but now was not the time for that question, if there would ever be a time. Geoffrey tolerated Emerson's presence at Pemberley because he was useful and eager to continue to make himself so.

"When I was a boy and my mother was ill. Bath was too expensive," he said. "I do not remember much of it to be of use, or I would have offered to go with them."

_That and Father likes putting a rifle to your person_, Geoffrey thought. He did not envy the Vicar. "If we ask – "

"I will go, of course. Anything." He looked to Sarah, the only one actively crying for a change. "Miss Darcy, please know that despite Mr. Hyde's dishonorable activities, he has never harmed anyone in ways other than with money and words, and if your sister is with him, she is not in physical danger."

She nodded to be polite but could not bring herself to believe him.

*******************************************

"Charles, you must go to Harrogate."

Bingley, back at Kirkland, was shocked by his sister's pronouncement. They were having a late snack together with Jane, as Danny remained at Pemberley. "If there is some correspondence – "

"Geoffrey is in charge of Pemberley. Go to Harrogate tomorrow. I would do it, but I must wait for Daniel, who said he will come with more information as soon as he can gather it."

Bingley looked to his wife, who could not offer him any immediate counsel. "Do you suppose Darcy needs help? Harrogate is not supposed to be a large town."

"That does not change it." Caroline was so stern and serious. "We are not as young as we used to be."

"Elizabeth is with him," Jane said.

"Eliza is not as young as she used to be. Neither are the servants they took." Caroline's voice was only concern, not mockery. "He will not admit it and he cannot admit it while his daughter is missing, but he should not do this alone, but he has ordered his son to stay home and Geoffrey will probably do what he says. You must go, and take Georgie."

"Georgie?"

"Do you need a reason there? I will grant you more intelligence than that."

Monkey whined for Bingley's attention, interested in the food in the bowl being passed around, but Bingley took him into his lap instead and looked again to his wife. "What do you think?"

"If Cassandra wanted shelter at Kirkland, she would have come immediately. She is elsewhere, and so are Darcy and Lizzy. We should go. And if Georgie will go, we should take her, for all the reasons Caroline is too good to state."

Bingley stroked the eager Monkey to calm him, but said nothing.

*******************************************

"You're serious."

Geoffrey looked on from his seat in his father's chair in the study as Georgiana, holding Brian, was confronted by her parents, who arrived first thing in the morning. His Aunt Bingley attempted to explain further, as she had a certain forcefulness to her words. "Your Aunt Maddox is right. We should go, but we should take someone with us who is able to move about, and everyone else is stationed somewhere else."

"Papa? You're asking me to go without my husband?"

He almost blushed. "Sort of. If you have suggestions – "

"Danny," Geoffrey said. "He's more mobile than he appears, and he's eager to go. Or Mr. Emerson, who was there once."

"Years ago, he said. And he does not know Georgie that well."

"Then Danny." Geoffrey was adamant; while he knew his wife could handle herself alone and Danny would simply slow her down, propriety demanded it. "With my blessing, offer it to Danny, and I'm sure he will oblige."

"Thank you."

"Uncle Bingley. Aunt Bingley." Geoffrey stood and bowed as they left.

"Aren't you _Mr._ Darcy?" Georgie said, Brian sleeping with his head on her shoulder. Geoffrey only arched his eyebrow. "You're more upset about being left out of this."

"Harrogate may be a dead end."

"There may be half a dozen dead ends before this is over. We'll turn England up and look under the corner like a rug if we have to."

Geoffrey grinned. "I am a little upset about being left behind."

"You have your sisters to console, and you have the children." She stroked Brian's hair, which was getting longer, but did not wake him. He was almost too large for her to keep holding like so. "Yes, before you say it, you are being left behind with the women and children. And the dog."

"And the Vicar."

"He does feel terrible about this. He's made that obvious."

"It is the only reason he's not in gaol." Geoffrey had practice now at being firmer than he usually was, but he relaxed a little and took his son into his arms to give her a break. "So go, for all the reasons they will not admit."

Georgie kissed him. "Thank you. I will make it up to you, I promise."

"As always, I will hold you to it."

*******************************************

Danny tried to disguise that he was thrilled by the idea of being asked to accompany them. Two carriages were prepared, for the Bingleys and then Mrs. Darcy and Mr. Maddox, who insisted on a quick walk to clear his head before the journey, as the Northern roads were a bit shaky and he said, disorienting.

They left at noon, after nearly half an hour of whining and crying by the three Darcy grandchildren, and hoped to be in Harrogate sometime that night. They were disappointed to realize otherwise when the rain came, so quickly and unrelenting that it forced them all off the road and into an inn for the night.

*******************************************

The only thing the Darcys learned upon their arrival to Harrogate was that Mr. Trenton Hyde still had a debt there at a fabric store to the tune of ten pounds. That was not much to go on, as the debt was years old, but it was all walking the main street and casually dropping his name to shopkeepers provided them with. Elizabeth persuaded Darcy to return to the inn for a meal, but could not talk him into retiring for the night.

"The taverns will be open awhile yet," he said. "I am not unfamiliar with this search, and it requires a night shift."

"It can wait." They had traveled through the night, arrived early in the morning at the inn, and barely ate anything (their stomachs still upset from the rocky road) before setting out to see every shop in town, presenting themselves as the vacationing couple. "It can wait a night."

"Our daughter cannot wait a night. She should not wait a night if she does not have to."

"I wish her here this very instant." He was not angry, and she did not wish to make him so. She stroked his cheek. "I would sell my very soul for it, but it is not to be."

"Then we must make it so ourselves." Darcy added with authority, "_I _must make it so."

"Take Reed."

"He's a valet, not a solicitor or thug."

"But he is not a fool."

"I maintain my position." He kissed Elizabeth. "I will not be gone long."

But before the door was fully closed from his departure, she knew it not to be true.

*******************************************

When the rain came, Darcy did not return. At first Elizabeth told herself it would be of short duration, and he was doing the most logical thing, which was waiting it out inside the closest building. She looked out the window of the small inn, and saw the streets absolutely empty. Harrogate was no Bath, and the streets were cobblestone and uneven. Before long, the puddles were large and the passing carriage sprayed water on whoever dared to venture outside. She sat at the windowsill.

"Mrs. Darcy?" It was her maid, with tea.

She accepted, looking for something to settle her stomach. "Bring Mr. Reed."

"Yes, marm."

As he was only in the next room, Darcy's trusted manservant was quick to answer the call. "Mrs. Darcy."

"Mr. Reed, I need you to find my husband."

"I understand. I requested the manager draw a map of the taverns when Mr. Darcy left."

She smiled. "Good thinking."

"Thank you, Mrs. Darcy." He did not stay to savor his small success, but put on a heavy coat and went right out the door, down the stairs, and out into the rain. Even the umbrella would not protect him from the water-lined streets.

Elizabeth watched him go, weaving his way between pools of water down the street.

"He will be all right, marm," her maid said. "Your husband, I mean."

"I wish them both to be all right," she said. "And returned."

*******************************************

If there was something Mr. Reed was absolutely sure of, it was that he could not return without his master. His standing and conscience depended on it.

Having been Mr. Darcy's man for nearly his entire career, Mr. Reed was no fool. He was used to the impulsive side of Fitzwilliam Darcy, who usually let caution reign but would give in to his other nature if the situation required it. He ruthlessly hunted his enemies if he needed something from them or wanted them brought to justice. He came close to rescuing his son from the Spencean Radical Mr. Hatcher himself, perhaps at the cost of his own life if not for Georgiana Bingley's bizarre interference. He did not sit idly by and let others do his dirty work, even if he was in the position to do so and even if it was wise to do so.

Mr. Reed also knew Darcy valued two things above all else: his wife and his children. Pemberley came third, and who had the top spot depended on who needed him more at the moment. As devoted as he was to Mrs. Darcy – and he was devoted – he would discard her good sense if his children, especially his daughters, were in perceived or real danger, and vice versa. He would not immediately return to the inn when the rain started if he thought there was more to be done. He would tax himself beyond measure, thinking his emotions made him stronger, and that the elements and his own body would not lessen his abilities. He would not, to be plain, see reason.

Though Mr. Reed was older than his master, it was not by much. Twice Mr. Darcy had quietly and subtly asked him about retirement, making it obvious he did not look forward to the day Reed would leave his service, but that the time had come to give him the option to do it. Both times, Reed outright refused. He was in good health, and had long come to believe his position was not only a good one but a Christian one, caring for an increasingly aging and occasionally sick man whom he cared for a great deal. He was only fortunate Mr. Darcy was in such good mental condition (which was not always true) when his daughter disappeared, otherwise his decisions might have been senseless.

The taverns did not reveal Mr. Darcy, though many bartenders said a man fitting his description had been there, inquiring after someone. There were only so many in town, and as the inn manager did not also provide him with a list of inns, gambling dens, and – G-d forbid – brothels, he was left at a figurative and literal crossroad. And it was still raining.

Mr. Reed himself was exhausted, leaning heavily on his cane, but like his master, he could not stop. He paused briefly outside the inn, staying away from the window where he knew Mrs. Darcy would be watching to not incite false hope or terror, and inquired as to Mr. Darcy's whereabouts. Had he arrived while his man was gone? No, the master had not. He was still somewhere in Harrogate.

With a sigh Mr. Reed started again. This time, he put a coin down on the bar in front of each man, even if they yielded nothing. One of them said, "He asked for places to gamble."

"Where did you send him?"

"Hargrove's place, on Seagull Island Road."

"When was this?"

"About an hour ago."

Mr. Reed paid him for directions and looked at his pocket watch. So Mr. Darcy had swung back. Praying that he was still there, he went to the location, only to be turned away. "Never heard of Hargrove."

Again, he produced a coin, one of large denomination. One did not pinch pence with Mr. Darcy missing. "I am looking for a man about my age, well-dressed, new to town."

The man's demeanor changed entirely. "I was hoping someone would come for him. The drunk passed out cold at the table before he could gamble a shilling."

Reed did not inquire further, only gestured for entrance, and it was granted. He found his master on the floor in the side room, sitting up against the wall and leaning his head against the shelf. He was not awake, but he stirred when Reed smelled his breath, which smelled only of the onions at dinner. "Mr. Darcy."

Darcy opened his eyes. "I just need to rest."

"You need more rest than this establishment can provide you with," he said, and Darcy did not argue. Hargrove and Reed helped Mr. Darcy to his feet, but he barely was able to stay there, even when his walking stick was supplied. When Reed inquired about a hat, Hargrove said he came in without one. "Soaked, the poor bastard was."

Reed removed his hat and put it on Mr. Darcy, not a perfect fit, but being wet made it settle better on his head. His master was wet, and seemed to have trouble concentrating in his exhaustion. Whatever objections he put up were easily ignored as he leaned on Reed and was nearly carried back to the hotel.

*******************************************

Elizabeth was startled at the knock. She had drifted asleep with her head against the cold window. Her lady-maid opened it a crack, and then seeing who it was, opened it the rest of the way. "Mr. Darcy."

Darcy did not respond as Reed dragged him into the bedchamber. "Light the fire. Get it roaring," he said to her maid. "And get hot water and dry blankets."

Elizabeth ran to Darcy's side. He was soaked to the bone. Every layer of his clothing was wet. "Darcy," she said, slapping his cheek, but his response was too soft to be comprehensible. Instead she focused on the task of relieving him of his wet clothing with Mr. Reed, who provided a dry set of clothes and found a towel for his hair. Only when he was in bed, and presumably warmer and drier, was she more insistent. "Darcy." She nodded to allow Reed to briefly leave their presence to change his own clothing, in a similar condition, and return. "Please wake."

"Cassandra."

"I don't know where she is, but we'll find her." She took the tea from her abigail and put it to his lips. "Drink."

He took the tea in his mouth but did not properly swallow, choking some of it back up. Elizabeth wiped his chin and only repeated, "Drink."

Darcy drank the entire cup and then a second before she let him lie down again. He was still shivering despite the layers. "Tell the manager to call for a doctor." Her maid did not need to be told that only the best would do. This was Mr. Darcy. "Darcy," she tried again, putting her warm hands over his cold ones, which were still clenched and shaking. "My love, come back to me."

"I have – I haven't found her."

"I know."

"I am sorry. Tell her I am sorry. Whatever I did – I am sorry."

"I will tell her," Elizabeth said, biting back tears she thought she was done with, "when we find her."

He did not speak anymore. He slept, and she held his hand, which was still cold.

And it was still raining.

.... Next Chapter - Harrogate


	35. Harrogate

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

**Huge Author's Note**: I can't believe it took me two days and a reader's comment to figure out a chapter was missing. As to WHY chapter 34 was missing, the short answer is you probably shouldn't be posting multiple chapters during a week of bronchitis and high fever. I apologize for any inconvenience to my readers. **Go back a chapter to read the correct chapter 34**.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 35 - Harrogate

The Bingley carriages did not arrive in Harrogate until well into the next day. They had a very late start, and the last miles were difficult terrain. It was still lightly misting when they arrived in town, and after a minor inquiry learned the inn Darcy had chosen.

The four of them, plus servants, rented the rest of the floor and entered the Darcy chambers just in time to see a man with a black bag leaving. Not knowing them, he did not speak to them, and Jane held them off and knocked on the bedchamber. Elizabeth opened the door and let them in. It was obvious she had not slept at all.

"That was the doctor," she said. "Darcy was out half the night, and he has a bad cold and a fever."

"Was anything prescribed?"

"Bleeding, but I refused, and called for another doctor. Beyond that, rest, and the usual treatments." Behind her, Darcy was asleep, his hand clenching the blanket in his fitful rest. "I should have told him not to go."

Jane held her sister's hand. "He would not have listened."

Danny Maddox took Darcy's hand and held his finger over the pulse as Bingley and Georgie stood over him. He sat for several minutes before he was decided, holding a watch to his ear to count. "His condition is not critical, but his age is a concern. But of course, I'm not a doctor."

"Japanese medicine is based on the pulse, is it not?" Georgie asked.

"It is, but this is not a treatment. I don't know how to treat him, and I couldn't, even if I knew how." He didn't need to say why, and gave up his seat.

They reconvened in the sitting room, leaving the door open. With Mr. Reed watching over him, Darcy was not even temporarily alone.

"What of Mr. Hyde? Anything?"

"Only that he has outstanding debts here," Elizabeth said. "Several years old. He is from this area, or lived here for several years before going to Cambridge. Whether he has been back since, I do not know. I do not know if we are all convened here for no reason."

"We will know soon. It is not a large town."

"That is what he said," Elizabeth replied, her voice ragged. Jane eventually convinced her to rest, but she would not leave her husband's side, so they had a cot brought in and she slept in the same room, but per the doctor's advice, not the same bed.

"He wouldn't want us to wait," Georgie said, and went to her room to change and eat. Before dark, she went out once with her father, but found nothing. By the time they returned a second doctor had arrived, and he made similar pronouncements, but had a different course of treatment.

"Normally a cold is not threatening," he said, "but of course there is the matter of the patient's age. Despite that, it seems he was in excellent physical condition before he took ill, so it is likely just a cold. The fever will drain him, so he needs lots of liquids, and steam to free the air in his nostrils. If he wakes, force him to eat. If he has new symptoms, call me immediately. Otherwise, I will return tomorrow."

Elizabeth thanked and paid the doctor, but he did not relieve her worries. Nothing but Darcy's full recovery would, and if his face was any indication, it would be a long way uphill. He did not wake, only mumbled Cassandra's name in his sleep.

*******************************************

When Georgie went out, Danny walked out with her, but he could not follow. She asked if he would be alright, and despite the new conditions, he assured her he would and she left him, or appeared to leave him.

Danny paid the doorman to show him to the most popular spa, which of course was closed for the evening. He waited on a bench outside. It was cooler after the rain, but still very humid, and he was sweating in his layers after the wait.

"Mr. Maddox."

He lifted his head. "Miss Mirela."

"There are a lot of bath houses here."

"I did not know a specific name." He reached out, and she took his hand. "Thank you for coming."

"I am in your debt, _gorgio_." She took his arm, far more acceptable of a thing to do with a blind man, and his heart sped up as it normally did. This time he ignored it. "So this man, you said his name is Trenton Hyde?"

"Yes."

"And you don't know what he looks like. No one does."

"The Vicar said his hair is black, and he is of average height, sharp features, and not very wide. Quite thin, actually. He dresses in nice clothing that hasn't been treated well. Beyond that, I know nothing, only that he lived here for a time and has gambling debts."

"Not much to go on."

"It is not a large town."

"I will help you."

Danny smiled. "I am grateful for it."

*******************************************

"I heard you were retired."

Georgie, dressed as Jack, was sweating under her outfit. It was too humid to be so covered up. "I got tired of winning, if that's what you mean."

The young man laughed. He was quite drunk, but could still talk coherently. "I would bet on you – if I hadn't lost it all tonight on cards. Tomorrow you should fight, when I have some coin on me."

"Would anyone fight me?"

He giggled and emptied another glass. "So, what brings Sir Jack to this shitty bath town? And I do mean that; people shit in the water. Probably."

"I'm looking for someone."

"Is he in hiding?"

"Probably."

"And you think I'm friends with him?"

"You're a bar drunk. I don't care what you are to him. All I'm saying is there's money in it."

"Where did you get money? Did you bet on yourself?"

"Of course."

Which sent him into another set of giggles, and she was tapping her sandal, waiting for him to recover. "Right. What is his name and how much does he owe you?

"Trenton Hyde, and a lot."

"Hyde? The salt shop owner? No, I was at his funeral – you mean the son."

Now she was getting somewhere. "Yes."

"He went to Cambridge. I heard he's a minister. Trenton Hyde, a minister! Those exams must not be so taxing."

"So you know him."

"Years ago, I knew him. The same old story – he's an old drunk like me, old before our time, and probably in debt. Almost got run out of town for trying to cheat a whore – which I don't recommend, by the way – but his father bailed him out. After that he was gone."

"Do you remember the whore?"

"He didn't know me well enough to give a name."

"Do you remember her establishment?"

He was laughing again at the word 'establishment.' "I don't know if it's still open, but I remember the street. There is a dress shop next to it, of all things. They probably specialize on gowns that are easily removable."

She was surprised how easy it was to get an address from the man, as long as she kept the free drinks coming. She kept talking until his head dropped on the table and he began to snore, and then she took her leave.

*******************************************

Danny sat at the end of the table, trying to concentrate over the din. His luck wasn't very good, no more than average, but it was a dice game and he was trying to learn the dice. _No_, he decided after he'd sat so long he was uncomfortable in his chair. _Too loud. I need a smaller game_. "Mary," he called, and Mirela came to him. It was a better name for her. She said she was dressed up, but he wondered how much like a gypsy she still looked. Of course, this wasn't the first time he wondered about something of that nature.

"Frederick?" she returned, and he smiled.

"I need a smaller game."

She tugged on his arm. "I'll take you to one."

"Dice."

She was trying to suppress her accent. "I know."

She helped him rise, and led him to another room, one where they sat on stools and let the dice fall on the ground. "Thank you," he whispered as she left to get him a drink. Without thinking, he grabbed the arm of the man on his left and said, "What does she look like?"

"What?"

"The woman with me. What does she look like?"

"You know you're with a gypsy."

"Yes."

"Well, you know the type. Oh, forgive me." He seemed legitimately apologetic. His voice was young, maybe late teens. "Do you know the type?"

"It's been a long time. Describe her."

"Black hair, lighter skin than I would have thought but still fairly dark, maybe a bit tanned. It's long and she's wearing it up but not very well."

"Is she beautiful?"

The boy laughed then realized he was serious. "Yes."

"How so?"

But the young man did not answer, because Mirela was there with the drink. "Frederick." And then she was gone again, leaving him with the kind of watery wine he would expect from a place like this.

The new game was announced, and someone shouted the rules to Danny, as if he was deaf, too. Danny just nodded and put down the required denomination of coin.

"She is beautiful, I suppose," said the young man, who doubtlessly did not know better. "Small nose, sharp features but not too sharp, not harsh. And a quite sizable pair of – "

"I know," he said, though to be honest, he didn't. "Forgive me. I am Fred."

"Michael."

They shook, and he concentrated on the game for awhile, betting as low as possible to prevent a mass expenditure of money. With dice, at least, he had as fair a shot as anyone. They were playing with cups on a wooden floor, quite a simple game, and when he was fairly sure he had the numbers, he betted higher, and began to win.

"Hell," Michael said. "I'm going with you!"

"They'll think us cheats."

"You are some new tourist and I am a townie; we could hardly be in bed together. Come, let's win our money back."

So they did, and a bit more, and Danny pulled back, much to Michael's disappointment. Mirela helped him up, and the three of them took the winnings to the table in the main room to order some better wine.

"So you are from Harrogate," Danny said. "I am interested in learning about its ... peculiarities."

"Then I'm not the man for you. There's a man who knows just about everything, though."

"Can you arrange an introduction?"

"If you tell me how you cheated."

Danny smirked. "I don't know if using your senses is cheating."

"You heard the dice?"

"It took me a long time, but the wood floor helped. That and the dice are not bone, as the impressions in bone dice aren't very deep and I can't detect the difference in sound when they fall. There's some chance in it when they roll."

"Could you teach me?"

"It's not something that can be taught. You can try to teach yourself, I suppose. Close your eyes when you do it."

Michael proved instrumental. The man Danny was looking for went by the name of Tom, and that was it, and a first meeting would not offer him more. They met to gamble, of course, and since Danny could not play cards, Tom reluctantly agreed to a tile game, saying it was slow to his tastes. Danny made it up to him by losing nearly as often as he could.

"I'm looking for someone."

"Of course you are." Tom put down another tile, and let Mirela tell Danny the numbers on it.

"A woman. She is presumably in hiding from her family."

"You'll have to be a bit more specific."

"Her name is Cassandra. Brown hair, light colored if I remember correctly, though it's been years since I saw her properly. Average height, perhaps a bit on the tall side, with a thin face and pointed features."

"Pretty?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"Whether I can get it or not, the information will cost you twenty pounds now, twenty pounds tomorrow."

Danny was in no position to bargain. "She cannot know I am looking for her."

"As you haven't told me your name, that should be easy. Though you are rather _memorable_."

"Yes, don't mention that."

"Another five quid not to mention it, if I find her. There's a man with her I suppose."

"Possibly. Black hair, can't tell you anything beyond that as I have never seen him, only heard a poor description." He put twenty-five pounds down on the table, more than some people would see in a year and others in a lifetime. "I'll want an answer tomorrow if you want your money."

Tom had a hearty, mocking laugh. "And if I don't, what shall you do? Sic your gypsy on me?" But Mirela must have glared at him, because he stopped laughing. "Good eve."

"Good eve."

Tom left them, and Mirela replaced him in the seat. "It is very late."

"Is it light outside?"

"It will be soon."

She walked him within a few blocks from the inn then stopped. "Just keep walking fifty paces and it will be on your left."

"Thank you." He squeezed her hand. "I really do mean it. And please think about what I said."

"No. I don't think I can bear it."

Danny did not contradict her, and let her go before continuing into the darkness that was always in front of him.

*******************************************

Georgie knew she was out too long. The sun was not already up and she was tired and unsteady as she climbed the steps to the apartment. The notorious house still existed, but few women there were old enough to have distinct memories of Trenton Hyde. Fortunately they knew someone who did, who was now retired and saw only certain callers.

She banged on the door for nearly ten minutes before she got an answer. The woman who opened the door was well dressed, albeit quickly. "I would say I am not at home, but I am standing here. You are very desperate." She frowned. "I do not know you, and whatever anyone told you about my relations with women, they are wrong."

She was the only one who saw through George's façade, and Georgie didn't call her on it. "I need to find Trenton Hyde."

The mistress looked her over carefully then opened the door the rest of the way. "Keep quiet." Meaning, someone was sleeping in the bedchamber upstairs. They sat down in the little parlor, neatly kept and full of expensive furnishings despite the neighborhood. Mrs. Arbela carried herself most gracefully, like a professional, and not just in her industry. "You are not his type."

"I hope not. I am married."

Mrs. Arbela poured her a glass of morning ale, as it was now the time for it. "I have not seen him in a long time myself, but I have heard he is returned to town, if you are seeking him. But clearly if you are, that is why he has done it so secretly, so that even I do not know where he is. And it is the only reason I can imagine he would come back here, with all his debts."

"Does he have a debt with you?"

She smiled. "No." But she soured quickly. "Not that I have good memories of him. Little boys can be foolish, but they are not supposed to be cruel. And he was never as smart as he thought he was. What is he now?"

"A reverend, if you can believe it."

"I cannot."

"Then that explains why he has no position. And no living." Georgie drank because she was parched and she needed something in her stomach. "Money is not an issue."

"Do you intend to kill him?"

She was not armed, at least visibly, but dressed as Jack, the question had to at least come up. "I hope not to."

"How shall I reach you?"

They hadn't discussed payment, but it was not something Georgie would bring up on her own. "I can give you the inn's name. Leave a note for Jack Wolfe behind the counter."

If Mrs. Arbela recognized the name, she gave no indication. "I will see to it."

*******************************************

The express was short, and to the point.

_Your father is ill with a cold. Come to Harrogate and bring your sisters._

Geoffrey's mother spent the rest of the small sheet giving detailed instructions as to the location of Harrogate and the inn where they were staying, and nothing else. He did not need to be told anything else.

He was fortunate in but one respect, in that he had the newly-arrived Dr. Maddox for counsel, so he was not all alone in the study when the letter came. "My father is ill. A cold."

"But your mother wants you to come anyway."

"Yes."

"While the news is unfortunate, I cannot say I am surprised."

"Nor am I." He did not pass the letter to Maddox. There was no reason to. "I should have stopped him. I should have gone to Harrogate myself and he should have stayed here."

"He never would have agreed to that, I'm sure. He will not sit idly by, even when perhaps he should. He never did when he was younger, and he won't do it now," Dr. Maddox said. "We old men cling to our pride while everything else deteriorates. Knowing Darcy, he has laid all the blame on himself and drove himself to a physical extreme almost as punishment. Whether he was conscious of it or not, he is very much like your Uncle Grégoire."

Geoffrey knew very little of Grégoire's history as a monk, except that it had twice over almost killed him. Still he could not deny it. "Will you stay at Pemberley?"

"If you wish me to. If I thought I would be of any help there, I would offer."

"You would be more help here. Someone must stay and coordinate our efforts, in case Harrogate is a dead end."

"For your father's sake," the doctor said, "I pray it is not."

.... Next Chapter - (no title yet)


	36. First Sight

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

Author's note: **This chapter is rated M for mature.**

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 36 - First Sight

As they were packing to leave, their trip nearly completed, the Turners received word from Pemberley of Cassandra's disappearance. Fortunately, Charles was present when the letter arrived. After a brief discussion, he took tea in the sitting room while they packed and Matthew tried to soothe Eliza's fears. When they returned to the room, Charles was more composed.

"I hope you will understand when I say I think it is best for me to stay in Paris." It was not an easy decision for him. His voice made it clear, unsteady as it was. "I do not think I will be much help in Derbyshire, not knowing Mr. Hyde at all, if he is indeed the culprit. If Cassandra flees to Paris, I will be here to find her. And I don't want to leave Paul." He guiltily looked away from his sister's gaze, however non-accusatory it was. "I cannot go to join my family when he is forbidden to speak to his, and give him the impression he is someone I keep in France. Had I not just been to England I would more eagerly go, but I am not doing my duty to him by so constantly leaving him alone, when he has no one else. Please forgive me."

"You are forgiven," Eliza said. There was no hesitation. "If we write that you are needed, you will come."

"Of course."

"But until then, you are right, I think, to stay in Paris. Is he not?" She turned to her husband, who knew it was time to nod. "So stay in the inn here and we will write you with updates. And we will give everyone your regards."

Charles composed a few long letters of comfort to take back with them, and they departed. It was more somber than planned, and they watched him waving from the street as the carriage departed for the coast.

"He would come," Eliza said, "if he thought he had to. It must be a terrible decision for him."

"Paul is not a new wife."

"But he is his friend, more than a friend, and he is suffering on his own. If Charles feels this is not the time to leave him, he is likely correct. He knows him best."

Matthew Turner held his wife's hand. "Hopefully we will return and by the time we have made our way to Derbyshire, your cousin will be found."

"Hopefully, yes." She leaned into him to fight the chill the words brought her, and he put his arms around her until she stopped shivering.

*******************************************

"Was it right? I cannot settle this."

Paul Watts now was officially in residence in Charles' room at the inn, instead of going back and forth between Paris and the coast. He did not yet know about the pianoforte, as it was still being prepared for delivery to their estate. "If you want to go, you can."

"If I'm _needed_, I will. To be honest, I don't think I am, beyond manning Paris in case she flees here. Cassandra and I were not close – no more than I was to the other Darcy sisters. Perhaps less, as I was in Cambridge when she was younger, and after she went out, I was either in Italy or drinking myself into a stupor in London."

"Why would she run?"

"My Uncle Darcy can be very intimidating, and to say he is overprotective of his daughters is not a strong enough phrasing to describe it. But inside he is kind and loving, and he would forgive her the moment she returned. Perhaps she can't see that."

Paul softened. "It was so hard for you to imagine your parents ever speaking to you again, much less what they have done to support your decision. If she has done something to ruin her reputation, she must feel a similar way."

"But I cannot comfort her if I do not know where she is!"

Paul leaned over and kissed him on the head. "Together, we will be the most unstoppable watchmen Paris has ever seen. It is all I can do for your family, so I ought as well give it my best, no?"

"I am grateful." It soothed his mind, and Paul's touch did the same. "I love you."

"You did not leave me because you thought it would hurt me," Paul replied, "and even if you had, I would still love you as much as I do now."

*******************************************

Back in Harrogate, the doctor visited just before lunch, while Georgie and Danny were still sleeping. The doctor was not pleased that Darcy's fever was still raging despite the constant application of cold towels to his forehead, and his patient had developed a cough. Still, this time Darcy was awake, though his mind addled by his fever.

"I must find her," he said. "I must find my daughter. I am her father."

"Mr. Darcy, you need to rest," the doctor said, closing his bag. "You have no infection, so for the moment you are safe, but I would not recommend even leaving your bed. Others are searching for your daughter."

Darcy shook his head. "This is my daughter."

The doctor did not argue, only turned to Elizabeth and Bingley. "Though I do not think he is strong enough to try anything, keep him in bed. If he sweats out the fever and it soaks the sheets, change them. Don't let him get another chill. If his cough continues, or worsens, send for me."

They thanked him most gratefully, but Darcy was indignant and did not speak again until the doctor left the room. Elizabeth sat down on the bed beside him. "Darcy, everyone is looking for her. They will find her."

"I cannot – "

"Danny said he has reason to believe Mr. Hyde is in Harrogate."

This stopped him from replying. He was too weak to conjure something so immediately.

"If he is in hiding, he will be found," Bingley said. "It is not a large town, so it is only a matter of time. She will be here soon."

Elizabeth applied a new cloth to his forehead, which was burning. "Anne and Sarah are on their way."

"I will not have my daughters searching the streets for me."

"_My_ daughter is searching the streets for you, and she is no doubt doing an excellent job," Bingley said. "Please try to sleep a little. They will be here tonight or tomorrow."

Darcy found he could not disobey.

*******************************************

The party shared a late lunch in the main room, so Elizabeth would not be far if Darcy rang for her. Mr. Reed was a bit ill himself and they rented a room and a servant for him, which he weakly protested was too much before giving in and sleeping.

Danny and Georgie shared their news, though how they got their information was not a subject for discussion, and a plan was set upon. The investigations into the location of Mr. Hyde and the possible location of Cassandra (if she was there and not with him) would not be halted, but done much more quietly than Bingley and Jane going to and fro about the town in broad daylight. Mr. Hyde was already in hiding, and he might flee if he received word he was being sought here, taking Cassandra with him. Georgie and Danny would push their more circumspect contacts and make new ones instead, and Bingley would do a few investigations of his own, but nothing public. Elizabeth would leave Darcy's side only if she had to, and at the moment, they saw no reason.

Before returning to bed to rest before another long night, Danny knocked on Georgie's chamber door. "Georgiana?"

"Come."

He entered, one hand against the wall of the unfamiliar room. "Please shut the door."

Georgie did so. "What is it?"

"I want to disappear for a day or two," Danny said. "I will entrust my location to you and Uncle Bingley."

"You have someone to help you."

He just nodded.

"I will not insult you by voicing my worries. I will only _order_ you to take care of yourself." She put a hand on his shoulder.

"You seek Mr. Hyde and I will seek someone hiding a young woman, and we may end up in the same place."

"I wish I could say I hope so, but I'm not sure I do."

*******************************************

Not long after Danny woke from his nap and departed, new Darcy carriages arrived, baring Geoffrey, Anne, Sarah, and Mr. Jameson. Elizabeth welcomed her daughter's embrace in turn. "Go to your father. If he is sleeping, do not disturb him."

As they obeyed, Anne's husband Mr. Jameson greeted his mother-in-law, and Geoffrey embraced his mother, then his wife. "Dr. Maddox and Lady Maddox are at Pemberley, relaying correspondences. Otherwise, we came as soon as we heard."

"It is only a cold," Elizabeth said. "Or so the doctor keeps telling me. But he has a fever and it will not relent, and it is draining him. Perhaps seeing Anne and Sarah will cheer him."

"I did not want to bring the grandchildren, and complicate things." He turned to his wife. "They send their love."

"You did the right thing." Though it did not sound like Georgie was happy about not having her children arrive, though she could not have expected it. "How are they?"

"Alison knows that Cassandra is missing, and she is trying to be brave, but she is worried. William was full of questions I couldn't answer, but he does know something is wrong. There was no avoiding it. Brian is happy with Mala and Monkey, but he cried when you left and he was crying when I left. He will recover. And they have Elliot Turner to play with, something I'm not sure our nephew agrees with the notion of." He was happy with her so close to him, even if they had no privacy. "How is my father, truly?"

"It is a cold. If he were a young man, he might be recovering. Instead, he is getting worse."

"How much worse?"

Georgie did not mince words. "He will be fine unless it develops into something else, but he is so weakened that it could. He cries out for Cassandra in his sleep and will not listen to reason. The only thing keeping him in bed is his inability to get out of it."

It was not what he wanted to hear, but he was still glad she told him. "We will find her and he will recover."

"That is the plan."

"Speaking of plans, what is yours?"

*******************************************

It took Danny the rest of the remaining day to find all the equipment he would need, unescorted in various stores, and he had to assume he was not being cheated (beyond the prices). With his little package he met up with Mirela, who caught him on the street before he even reached their meeting place, and guided him to an inn. Two flights up the stairs from the tavern, she showed him around the room. He liked to feel everything before he made a place his home, as it would be for a brief but crucial time.

By the time they made it back to the tavern, it was much later, Danny was moving slowly and deliberately, and Mirela was a little frightened – of what would come later, not of Tom. She expressed it in the way she took his arm, and tonight could not play the flirting mistress. He did not ask it of her.

Tom showed after a few watery drinks. "You won't like it, but I have it."

Danny slipped his hand into his coat pocket and removed precisely twenty-five pounds, placing them down hard on the table so the coins made a noise.

"His name is Ian Bower. He protects women, in a fashion."

"In a fashion?"

"If say, a man and woman come but don't want to live together openly, he hides the woman for a price. Or say, a man and woman come together and the man wants to hide the woman in case her family comes round looking for him, that's another price. If the woman is to be offed, there is a whole 'nother price sheet."

"He'll hold women against their will?"

"I hear he makes a good living off it."

Danny put his hand down on the table, the other gripping his cane, but the coins were gone, of course. "Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know!" Danny nearly tore into his pocket again to get more coins. "How much?"

"I said, I don't know. I need a day." Tom added with some sympathy in his voice, "I will do it without cost. Fifty is enough."

Danny knew it was time to settle down, but he had trouble doing it. "Thank you. Is this man violent or can he be bribed?"

"Depending on the situation, it could go either way."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, Mr. Maddox."

Danny shuddered as they left, waiting until they were back on the street to speak. "I did not tell him my name."

"He is the man who knows everything. What do you expect?" Yet her voice was sympathetic. "He will know tomorrow. It can wait until tomorrow."

"I hope to G-d it can. Take me back."

She obliged him, and they returned to their room, where he removed his waistcoat and began setting the things on the dresser. "Are you ready?"

"I don't want to do this."

"But can you? You said you are good with a knife."

"If you die – "

"I won't."

"If you do," she insisted.

He sat down in the chair, removing his cravat. "If I do, say you work at the inn and you found me. You know where my family is staying."

"Yes."

"You can leave it anonymously. Now, can you hand me the green bottle and the spoon." She did, and he poured a triple dose of laudanum for himself and swallowed, followed by a shot of whiskey to help it go down well. He freed his Buddhist rosary, usually so tightly wound around his arm, and clasped his hands together. "_Namu Amida butsu. Namu Amida butsu. Namu Amida butsu."_

"What does that mean?" Only with urging did Mirela tie his arms to the chair.

"It means, I put my faith in the compassion of the Amitābhabuddha." He felt a little giddy from the drug. "I'm ready."

"I'm not."

"I have faith in you." He added without thinking, "I love you."

"I know," was the last thing he heard before she began.

*******************************************

Mrs. Arbela did not have Georgie's information – not yet – and Georgie returned early and angrily to the inn. She was so angry at her own incompetence at finding Cassandra, a woman who had never run before and should be easy to find. Geoffrey was waiting for her. "Lie down."

"No."

"Then at least sit." He was used to her stubborn streak, brutal when it appeared. He had to push her down into the chair himself. "Have something to drink." There was hot tea, and when in front of her, it did smell appealing, especially when it was spiced with cinnamon the way she liked. "There is someone who wishes to see you."

"Who?"

"The Vicar. He has just arrived."

She nodded and called her maid for her robe, which she put over her Jack outfit before she bid him to enter and stood to curtsey. "Mr. Emerson."

He bowed. "Mrs. Darcy. Mr. Darcy."

"Can you be of some assistance?"

"Maybe. I hope to be. I thought if you find him, maybe Trenton will see me, and I can distract him for others to get to him."

"You would put yourself in some danger," Geoffrey said.

"Mr. Darcy, with all respect, your father had a rifle to my chest but a few days ago. How much more danger can I be in this week?" He had a weak smile for them. "I am responsible for this, and I will see it through to the end."

Georgie's admiration for the Vicar was slowly but steadily rising. "I suspect my husband wants to go out himself this evening. Do people in town know you?"

"No. I have never been here before."

"Then perhaps you should go with him." She added, "You will be safe. He used to be a Japanese constable."

"I'm glad you give me that credit," Geoffrey chuckled.

*******************************************

Despite the presence of his other daughters and his wife, Darcy had fallen into a delirium. It could not be unexpected after two days of unrelenting fever on top of the cold and exhaustion, but it was disturbing nonetheless. "Cassie, I did not mean it. I did not mean it."

"Papa," Anne pleaded, holding his hand.

He turned to her, his eyes unfocused. "Cassie, I will not punish you, I promise. I love you."

"Papa, it's me. Anne." She wiped his forehead again.

"'My darling Anne.'" But he still didn't seem to recognize her. He was quoting from her bracelet, which his eyes found, and he remembered the inscription that was too small for him to read from that distance. "Mother, you would have liked Lizzy. You would have loved her." He was not talking directly to Anne, or did not appear to be.

"Darcy, come back to us." Elizabeth was near tears again. She did not want to cry in front of Anne, or in front of Sarah, who had an arm around her because she needed steadying. "Cassandra will be here soon, I promise."

"I want to hold her." He held his arms out, expecting a baby. "I need to hold her. It's so dark."

Elizabeth put a hand on his cheek and pointed his face in her direction, so he had to meet her eyes. "Darcy, look at me. Remember me. Talk to me."

"I remember those fine eyes. Miss Bingley made fun of them but I always loved them." He had a deranged smile. "My Elizabeth."

For the moment, she would accept that much. "My Darcy."

.... Next Chapter - (no title yet)


	37. Cassandra's Story

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

Author's note: **This chapter is rated M for mature.**

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 37 - Cassandra's Story

Whether Cassandra Darcy was being hunted or hated, she did not know. Though the thought of her father's rage terrified her, she did not think at first that she had ever truly seen him angry, only heard stories. But he would be disappointed; there was no doubt. Everyone would be disappointed, but if her father ever looked at her again, it would not be with the same eyes. She was sure of it.

When she met Mr. Hyde, she knew instantly she was playing with fire. They met under the most unsuspicious circumstances – he was visiting his friend and fellow clergyman the Vicar Emerson, and she was doing her rounds of charity work with her sister and mother and was temporarily separated from them when she went to pick wildflowers. He was there, and he apologized profusely for the intrusion, and took his leave.

It was the first of many intrusions that fall. She was intelligent enough to know she could blame only the first on happenstance. However much he tried to hide it, there was a hungry look in his eyes, different from her suitors in Town. Even the least respectful of them saw her money or her mere physical features, to the extent that she could show it at a ball and still adhere to the proprieties of society, but the look in his eyes was different. His eyes were crystal blue and they were like lightening in the sky, quacking her very soul.

At two and twenty, Cassandra knew what it meant. She had never experienced it, of course, but for a few quick kisses and one near miss of a wandering hand, which put an end to that suitor, who had been a perfectly decent person before that. Though she was shocked each time, and willingly took her father's leave to abandon the man, she could not fight the senses that came later, that something was missing from her life and her patient wait for "the very best of men" (as Sarah was so fond of saying, and as a result would probably never marry, as no man existed) meant she was missing some essential. Whatever her father and society said, it belonged in her life, and just knowing that made her all the more lonely. Though she was loathe to admit it, that her brother was in an intense physical relationship with Georgie was obvious. Their three children (four if one counted the stillbirth), one born suspiciously soon after the wedding, was a testament to that. They hid in Lancashire and did whatever they pleased, coming only when called. Georgie was a wild woman, and Geoffrey was wild for her.

Even Anne disappeared with Mr. Jameson, the former colonel, who managed on his savings and her inheritance. Despite their financial status, which was nothing to Geoffrey's, they were content with one another. It gave her chills to imagine how they spent their time, all alone on their estate, and were still not bored in each other's presence.

Edmund's divorce, Edmund's second wife (the result of a tawdry and embarrassing affair with a client's neighbor), Eliza's marriage to the loving Mr. Turner, even Charles' life of indignity were all things she watched happen around her but had no part of, except to be expected to celebrate their happiness. She did love them, but how could she not be jealous? Sarah was fooling herself if she wasn't. Or maybe she really was that naïve, always in the library with her books. She seemed oblivious to Mr. Emerson's interest in her, though to be fair, he was being subtle about it. He had to be, in front of Fitzwilliam Darcy.

There was her father, hovering over his daughters, silently disapproving of his son on occasion, and barely tolerating Georgie's antics because she saved his life by fighting Hatcher. He loved his daughters, though the way he expressed it was nothing short of frustrating.

Mr. Hyde was at most a way out of that and at least a temporary relief. He was also slow to approach her, and slow to advance, ever cautious of them being discovered. He did not propose they run off to Gretna Green, or that she run at all. He was smart. He was loving enough – not sickly sweet, but he had what she wanted, and he was aware of that and she was aware that he was aware, so it all worked out. He also knew a few preventions against the production of a child, which was useful. They did not turn her stomach too badly, and they had no lasting damage except to bring her courses at strange times. He was slow, methodical, and most importantly, a relief.

Everything was going too well. She would go to London for the winter, to be rid of him for a bit, and look for a real husband. He hadn't proposed marriage and she did not expect him to bring it up. Once he lost the curacy possibility when his friend refused to nominate him, his main interest became her, but they both knew the relationship would end.

When her courses were late, she did not even notice for the first week, as she was so accustomed to them being irregular from the tansy and quinine. Then she felt ill in the mornings, looked at the calendar, and the real fear set in. She did not want a child. Her father would make her marry this man. Was there still time? Perhaps there was, because when she finished off the bottle of quinine, her courses came – on the floor in the kitchen, in front of her father. G-d was certainly insistent on forcing her penance on her. Though he seemed concerned, she knew when she explained, he would be disappointed, and she could not, at that moment, bear to disappoint him. He looked to her with concern and she loved her father too much to tell him the truth – that she was a whore. She could not inflict that pain on him, however much she was in. She had not meant to shout, but she was so frustrated at herself that it happened, and if it was going to happen, let her say just this once what she meant, that she couldn't take his 'protection' any more.

So she ran. Cassandra was already concerned enough about the amount of blood, far more than normal, that she was quite in a state when she appeared at Trenton's place. The Vicar was still asleep – he was a heavy sleeper and she was good at not disturbing him. To her surprise, Trenton was all sympathy, and he had a plan in hand. They would go to one of his hiding places and when she recovered, they would discuss something, but nothing could be done until then. She cried in his arms the whole way it seemed like, though he later told her she slept through some of the ride. At least she stopped bleeding. He even bought her a new gown when they arrived.

He paid for a doctor, who told her she had miscarried. This time, Trenton was not so interested in her fits. She put him in danger, he said. Her father would kill him – he killed his own brother, did he not? Yes, Cassandra had told Trenton her father was a murderer, so for the moment, she understood. He waited until she stopped crying to tell her about Mr. Bower, who would hide her. He was a nice man when he greeted her. He gave her a small but comfortable room, even if it was shabby. Trenton promised to see her as soon as he could safely do so.

Cassandra experienced a new pain then, the pain of an empty promise. Trenton did not visit her, and she could not leave. Her door was locked, the only window barred. After two days, Mr. Bower demanded payment. He said his services weren't free, the food wasn't free, and Hyde wasn't paying him. She had nothing, only her jewelry, and that fended him off for the first day. The second, it did not, and he would take his own payment. He was not interested in her cries or screams. He was stronger than her, of course – everyone was. Even little Georgie was stronger than her. And as much trouble as Georgie had ever gotten herself in, it was nothing to this. As Mr. Bower forced himself on her and in her, she knew she could never go back. Even if she physically went back, she could never go back. Her father would never accept her – who would? Who would want a daughter like that? A wife with that past? A woman so stupid and ignorant and foolish, and now probably scarred inside? What if she could never have children? What if she was barren?

Cold and alone, that was all she had to think on, except when Mr. Bower would come next. She could try to escape, she supposed, when the door was opened, but even if he didn't catch her, where could she run? The world outside offered her nothing. She rejected its conventions, and it rejected her.

She was alone, and she deserved nothing better.

*******************************************

As soon as Georgie received a message from Mrs. Arbela, she was ready to go. It had taken two days, but it was worth it.

Geoffrey answered their door at the knock. It was Mr. Emerson.

"If Mrs. Georgiana knows where Trenton is, I'd like to accompany her."

"Now is not the time for personal business, Mr. Emerson."

"This is not about me. This is about Mr. Hyde. He knows me. Perhaps he will allow me in where the door is otherwise barred. He thinks I will do nothing against him."

"So far he's been right about that."

Geoffrey tried to shut the door, but Emerson put his hand against it. "Please allow me to be of some aid, anything."

"You may risk your own life tonight."

"And if I do nothing, do I risk another's?"

Geoffrey turned to the changing station, from which Georgie emerged. "Let him come," she said. She was dressed as Jack. Geoffrey grumbled and opened the door, and Mr. Emerson did his best to hide his surprise at her dress, though he could not have been unaware about the legends of her behavior. In her shorts, she curtseyed. "Mr. Emerson."

He bowed. "Mrs. Darcy. Mr. Darcy."

"If you think it will help, you may come, though you may be sent home if you are not needed or compromise the situation," she said. "My husband will try to enter, and I will go around." She had with her a large bag, almost half her size, which she handed to Geoffrey, who put it over his shoulder. "You will do everything I say?"

"As much as I am able."

That was enough for Georgie, who peered in on her sleeping uncle, her Aunt Darcy nodding off in the chair by his side, and tried to leave. She was stopped by her father, who kissed her on the forehead. "Don't do anything dangerous."

"I cannot swear to that, Papa. I will not break a promise."

"Don't get yourself hurt, then."

She frowned. "I cannot swear to that, either."

"_Seriously_ hurt. Please try. For your Papa."

"For you." She hugged him. "I hope to be back soon, and with Cassandra." She did not have to add, _That or Hyde's dead body_.

*******************************************

For a day Danny Maddox wallowed in pain, as Mirela used wet towels to try to stop the bleeding, much more than they expected. He drank not just gin but tea, and as much soup as the innkeeper could provide and he could stomach, foul as it was. He had to keep his strength up. He did not yet remove the bandages. "In my belongings, there is a case." He had not opened it in years. "It has my name written on it. Bring it."

They went to the tavern to meet Tom. Danny was no longer bandaged, but his fresh wounds were still obvious, and a little blood here and there was wiped up by Mirela. He sat across from Tom, ready to put money down if necessary. "The address."

Tom had it on a slip of paper, and he read it to them then gave the slip to Mirela, not knowing she couldn't read. "You didn't get this from me."

"Of course. Thank you, Thomas." Danny rose and bowed, holding Mirela's arm tightly. If Tom stayed, he did not know, because he did not remain long enough. They left immediately. It was dark outside, well into the night now, and they reached the address. Mirela picked the lock and handed the small case to Danny, who put it in his pocket and opened his waistcoat, giving his arms greater freedom as he entered.

"That's not very smart," said the man across from him. "Breaking into my house."

Danny snapped open his sword cane and drew it.

"What the hell are you going to do with that?"

"This," Danny said, and pushed against the man he assumed (almost hoped) to be Ian Bower. He sliced down, from his chest across the top of Bower's pistol, and the blade went right through Bower's flesh, neatly removing his thumb. The blood sprayed on them both before he staggered back.

"What the fucking hell?" He looked up at Danny as he quivered on the ground, holding his hand. "Oh my G-d, you're – "

Danny raised his sword in a ready position. It wasn't as strong as his samurai swords because it was a straight blade, but it would do. "Where is Cassandra Darcy?"

Holding his bloody hand with his other, the man pointed in the general direction of the stairs leading down. Mirela entered from behind to tend to the man and make sure he didn't bleed to death. She retrieved a key ring from him and passed it to Danny. "Are you alright?"

He was bleeding a little. He could feel it, and his wounds throbbed, but he ignored them. For that moment, all he could feel was joy. "Yes." He gathered himself to add, "Don't come until I call."

She nodded and he proceeded down the dark stairway.

*******************************************

Cassandra had nowhere to hide, though she tried the corner she was crying in, behind the bed. "No!" she screamed to the knock on the door. "Please. I don't have anything."

The door unlocked anyway, and she stifled a sob, then sat in shock as Danny Maddox Junior hobbled his way in. There was a candle on the bed stand so she could see him hold the wall as he entered, feeling his way with his cane. "Cassandra?"

"No! Don't come! They can't see me like this." She put her head down. "I don't deserve to be rescued."

Danny made his way over to her, but she just looked at the floor. He set his cane down, fussed with something for a moment, then took his hands and gently placed them on her cheeks. She could not for that moment remember such tenderness as he tilted her head upwards.

He was wearing his glasses. Though scar tissue still crossed his face, his eyes were open, and looking at her.

"You can see."

"Yes," he said, smiling, "and I am very happy to see _you_."

.... Next Chapter - (no title yet)


	38. Showdown

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

Author's note: My computer has crashed. No important information was lost but I'm posting this remotely. Sorry for any delays.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 38 - Showdown

Cassandra leapt into his arms, and he sat down on the bed and let her cry until she was done, and could compose herself enough to say, "Does anyone know?"

"Only two people upstairs – the man holding you, and my friend. But the only person I've seen clearly in five years is you." One of his eyes was still poor, and he would require a stronger prescription, but he could see, and fairly well. It was more disorienting than he thought it would be, and even the small light from the sole candle burned his eyes. "Beneath the scars, my eyes must have healed. I needed my sight to fight Mr. Bower."

"You cannot tell Papa about him! You cannot tell him he..." But she could not finish the sentence, and leaned on his shoulder.

"He what?" But there was no response. "He what, Cassie?"

"Please don't kill him."

"He violated you?" He was angry, yes, but it needed to be said.

"I deserved it. Please don't tell Papa."

"Your papa is not in the condition to hear much of anything right now," he said, and she picked up her head and looked at him. "He is very ill. He drove himself out in the rain looking for you, and now he is sick. If not for his age, he would be recovering, but he is not. You are the only one who can help him."

"He will not want to see me. You do not know him."

"So you say, and you are his daughter, so it is hard for me to dispute your claim. I can say that he has done little in three days but call your name. And yes, he knows about Mr. Hyde, but perhaps we will leave Mr. Bower out of the equation for now. And he still wants to see you – he needs to see you."

"Mama is with him?"

"Everyone is with him – your brother and your sisters, Aunt and Uncle Bingley. He will not be comforted. If he were strong enough to stand, we would have to hold him down, because he would want to keep up the search. If you do not go to him, he will die. It is too much for him."

"To see his daughter in disgrace?"

"To know she is not well and be able to do nothing, even see her or speak to her. He has no room in his heart for anger at you. If he ever had any, it is certainly gone now."

Her hands were shaking, and she held one of his. "I wanted to go to Mama that morning, but I saw him – I did the wrong thing. I did so many wrong things."

"You were ill."

"Mr. Hyde brought me here, but I had no idea – I would not have – " She looked up at him. "Is he really ill?"

"He will recover a bit, certainly, when he sees you. He is not a young man."

"My whole family is there?"

"They will not say anything, I am sure of it. They are not upset. They are too worried." Danny rose, offering his hand. "I am weakened from my surgery, so I cannot drag you, so you have a choice. But I would plead with you to return to your father's side and comfort him in his illness."

She looked down, then up again, and took his hand. Her legs were unsteady, but together they found their way up the stairs, where Mirela had Mr. Bower's uninjured arm tied to a window bar. "Mr. Maddox." She was shocked to see him with his glasses, so clearly returning her gaze. Or had she always reacted to him that way?

He bowed. "Miss Mirela." But he did not take his eyes off her. He saw her briefly, after the fight, with her long, black hair in a braid, her skin dark, but only in a timeless way that made them all seem pale and ugly in comparison. That was brief, and there was more blood in his eyes then. Now he could see, truly see, and he forgot Cassandra for a moment, even though she hung on his arm for strength. "Mirela..." He came to his senses. "May I introduce my cousin, Miss Darcy?"

The women curtseyed awkwardly.

"What about him?" Mirela gestured to the half-conscious, moaning Bower.

"Please don't kill him, Danny," Cassandra pleaded.

"Don't worry. I don't have it in me." He drew his sword cane and stood over Bower, a strange sense of power in having his victim at his mercy, truly at his mercy, with no preconditions. He knew what he had to do. "Cassie, look away."

She did. Mirela did not. She did not flinch as he flipped the sword and stabbed Mr. Bower as he would with a long ice pick, and the man howled. No doubt, he was in unimaginable pain, but Danny just drew the blade back, and carefully put it back in the case. "You will live. Not happily, but you will." And he turned away from Mr. Bower, who was not pierced in any way that would kill him, but he would certainly never violate a woman again. That part of him was no longer connected.

* * *

According to their intelligence, Mr. Trenton Hyde was currently residing on the top floor of a boarding house within the city limits. Georgie disappeared shortly before they approached the front stoop.

"Good luck," Geoffrey said.

"You, too." And she was gone into the night, with her bag on her back.

"What is she going to do?"

Geoffrey looked at the nervous Vicar. "Hopefully nothing."

The landlady opened the door before they could knock. She was short and heavy, and she certainly had a presence. "She's already here."

"What?"

But it was not Georgie who appeared inside, but Sarah Darcy. "I want to help."

"You can help Papa."

"I'm not helping him. _This_ will help him."

"Not if you get hurt," Geoffrey growled.

"I have you, I have the Vicar, and I have Georgie. I won't get hurt. Now let's go, before we tip him off."

Geoffrey looked to the Vicar, who only shrugged. "I don't approve of this."

"I don't require your approval," Sarah answered definitively, and began up the steps. He rushed to catch up with her, knowing there was nothing he could do for the moment. Maybe in the room, it would be different. He was the one with the guns, and he didn't bother handing one to her. She did not know how to use one.

It was the third floor, the only room. Too high to jump out the window, or so Geoffrey was fairly sure. He hadn't checked the building beforehand. "Mr. Hyde?"

There was no answer. With a nod of approval from Geoffrey, Mr. Emerson called out, "Trenton, open the door."

They waited in the darkness. The hallway was only lit by the moon through the sole window. Finally the door swung open, and a man only distantly familiar to Geoffrey from services at the church at Lambton – he sat in the back sometimes – appeared. "You must be kidding me."

"Trenton – "

But Hyde was only interested in the man with two pistols in his belt, even if he wasn't holding either. "Mr. Darcy. My condolences on your sister – there is an awful rumor circulating about her in town."

Geoffrey drew a weapon, but it wasn't his pistol. It was only his jutte, which was a bit like pointing an unsharpened dagger at Hyde as he stepped in the room, Hyde backing up appropriately. "Where is she?"

"Not so easily, found, eh?" He was not intimidated. "Twenty-five thousand pounds. You know that's a very reasonable price – only half her dowry when I could perfectly well ask for the full fifty."

"Twenty-five thousand pounds for directions?"

"And my silence, of course." He looked at Emerson. "Tom, you might want to chime in here, for your own good. Doing penance again?"

"I never should have trusted you!"

"You didn't trust me. I proved myself a sorry, unforgivable lot again and again, enough for any fool to learn. But that was nothing compared to you. So now you are to be Cassandra's savior?"

"You have no right to call her that," Geoffrey said.

"Her Christian name? I would say being inside her does allow me a certain level of intimacy."

Sarah and Mr. Emerson grabbed Geoffrey before he could charge. One hand held his jutte, the other on his now drawn gun, which he held up. "My sister is not a whore!"

"She is now, if the man I left her with has his way with her, and he will. His reputation is worse than mine, and for a good reason. But he's good at hiding women who don't want to be found." He sat down at the end of the long table. His dinner was half-finished and he poured wine for himself as they worked to hold Geoffrey off. "I'll give you the information – Ian Bower. Drop his name in the right circles and you'll have him, and for the right price, your sister. But you can stop threatening me. Killing me might insure my silence, but they do hang murderers, and who would have more cause than the brother of a fallen heiress?"

Geoffrey snarled and stepped back, or at least stopped trying to fight them. Emerson stepped forward. "Trenton, have mercy. Repent and they will be kind."

"What do you know about repentance, you G-dless sodomite?" Hyde said it so casually that Emerson might have refuted it, but he did not.

"I've learned hiding only leads to further disaster," Emerson said. "It was my past dalliances that led to Miss Cassandra's destruction by a man I should never have associated with, much less tried to hold in check. Was it always about money?"

"Between you and me, I hope so. As for _Miss_ Cassandra, she practically threw herself in my arms. How could I resist against her overeager charms? I'm practically the victim here."

It was Emerson, not Geoffrey, who charged first. He went flailing, having no idea what he was doing, and Trenton merely held a leg out and kicked him. His boot was so heavy, and the impact so difficult, that Emerson flew back and hit the ground in the doorway with a thud. Sarah ran to him. "Mr. Emerson?"

"He'll be fine, but uninterested in _your_ attentions," Hyde said. He looked up at Geoffrey as he put a leg up on the table. "Now that your precious, G-dly Vicar is dispatched, shall we get down to business?"

"I want an address."

"Seagull Island Road, Number Twelve."

Geoffrey put away his pistol, but kept the jutte in his hand. He looked briefly at the window behind them, then at Hyde. "Twenty-five thousand pounds for your silence."

"Yes. And I think Tommy is more than willing to contribute to the fund, if you are still speaking to him at the end of the night."

Geoffrey steeled himself to keep from attacking this man again. "I will find Mr. Bower and when my sister is found, we can discuss it."

"You know where I am."

Geoffrey turned to his sister and grabbed Mr. Emerson, hauling him up by the arm. "Come." They were down the stairs with Emerson's limping, and he called back up, "Hyde?"

"What?"

"We'll be back," Geoffrey said, in front of the landlady, and they departed to the street. On the steps outside and across the street he could see to Emerson, who seemed to have sprained or broken something, but was doing his best to hide it.

"Are you coming back to pay him?"

"Of course not. I was only establishing to his landlady that he was alive when we left him."

* * *

Trenton Hyde had the window open. He faced the door as he picked at his teeth, his back to the window for a breeze, and he dropped the knife in his lap when the figure went right over him and onto the table, landing without a sound. She was barefoot – he could tell the gender from her tiny feet, the ankles striped with blue paint. She straightened the candlestick before standing, and even at full height, she was not very tall. The wolf headdress made her more imposing.

He came to the most logical conclusion he could make. "So the rumors are true. You're mad."

Georgiana Darcy drew out her arms. Both had long metal claws attached to them, secured by a wrap around her hands.

"You intend to kill me?"

"Yes."

"You want to make it that obvious?"

She stepped forward carefully, so not to disrupt his dinner setting. He drew his gun, but she either couldn't see it through the wolf mask or did not care. Maybe she thought she was bulletproof. "Is it true? About Mr. Bower?"

"Yes."

"You should have said no. It might have saved your life."

He held up the gun more distinctly. "If I'm found dead – "

"You violated her."

He swallowed. "I believe the term is seduced. She was not unwilling."

"It was not a very gentlemanly thing to do."

"I am not a gentleman. And neither is your Vicar, a poor choice if there ever was one. I – "

"I heard." She took another step forward, avoiding the crystal wineglass. "I heard everything. Put down your gun. It is not going to help you."

"Put down your weapons first – if you can."

She leapt off the table without disturbing so much as the wine in the glass, and was similarly noiseless when she hit the ground. Slowly and methodically, all while his pistol was still pointed at her, she undid the straps and set both pairs of claws on the table. They were terrifying when he could see them better, even when they were off her person. She even removed the wolf mask, letting it fall back on her neck with the rest of the hood, so Georgiana Darcy's war paint-marred face was exposed for all the world – mainly him – to see. She did not hesitate, but nor did she show any emotion he could register as either fear or rage, the two he was most familiar with from the prior group. "Now you."

"Not so fast. If you have no money, we have no reason to speak."

"You violated my sister-in-law and left her with a man of suspicious character, and of course, you want money." She stepped closer, and repeated, "Put the gun down."

Maybe it would be wise. At this range he would kill her, and then how would he explain it? Because he would still have to explain it, and however mad she was, it wouldn't make her less dead. He knew of no one he could pin this on, not on the spur of the moment. And she could probably see his hand shaking. "Remove your weapons."

She took off her rosary of all things, holding it up in one hand and letting the beads hang on the upright palm of the other. "Some things are not removable. Just as some things are unforgivable." She clapped her hand and he felt her finger on his chest, and then an explosion of pain that his brain could not describe before it stopped describing things to him altogether. He only knew pain and then he knew nothing at all.

* * *

Cassandra Darcy's legs were wobbly, but Danny and Mirela held her up, and she made it to the inn. Her mother, of all people, opened the door. "Cassandra. My darling." She did not ask. She did not beg anything of her, except, "Go to your father."

Her tears made everything hazy, almost dreamlike, after being in the dark for so long. Even though it was late at night and the room was lit only by candles and the moon, she felt like she had returned to the light. Anne was there, and she heard her mother talking to Danny, and her Uncle Bingley running to him, and of course some excitement about that, but Anne just led her to the bedchambers, where her father lay.

Never had he looked old to her. Of course he was always old_er_, as he was her father, and only distantly could she remember when he was not grey, but he was _old_ now, like her Grandfather Bennet had been. However long it had been – she knew it only to be days, but it felt longer – had been a century to him as far as his appearance was concerned. He was asleep, but Anne said it was all right, and he wanted to see her, and Cassie sat down in the chair presented to her and took his hand. "Papa."

"Cassandra."

"Yes, Papa."

He opened his eyes, as if not expecting her to really be there. "Cassandra?" His voice was different now, less lost and more confused, like he wasn't just calling out, but he still needed to be found. His hand tightened a little over hers and she held it. "I don't – " Anne's arm came from somewhere, to put another towel on his head. He briefly closed his eyes again. "I'm sorry."

"Papa, it's not your fault."

"I didn't mean – please come back."

"I am back." She held his hand, so much larger than hers, and wondered if he really felt her. "I'm right here, Papa, I promise you, and I'm not leaving."

He opened his eyes with new focus. "Cassie?" He had not called her that since she was a child, but it was not meant to be diminutive, she could tell. He just didn't know. He couldn't be sure. Maybe it was the fever, affecting his brain.

"Yes. And I'm sorry, for everything I've ever done wrong, and for blaming you, if you'll have me back."

"If you'll have..." he repeated. "I don't understand. You can't leave – please don't leave me."

"I won't leave you. I _promise_."

He reached out with his other hand, but he wasn't strong enough, and she helped it to her cheek and held it there. His eyes had little focus to them, and his tears probably made it worse, not better. "Cassie. My baby."

"Yes."

"You didn't leave – you've come back." He added, "I'm sorry."

"I know. I'm sorry, too."

"Will you stay?" It seemed to him the most important question he had ever asked in his life.

"Yes, Papa. Of course I will."

He smiled, just a little, cracking the face of weakness and age. Soon it would shatter. "Thank you."

"Rest, please. You're not well."

"So I'm told," he said, and she could hear his old, defiant voice in there, but he did as she asked, and before her eyes fell into a peaceful sleep.

.... Next Chapter - (no title yet)


	39. The Case of Mr Hyde

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 39 – The Case of Mr. Hyde

Upon arriving at his father's room at the hotel, Geoffrey Darcy did not expect to be greeted by someone he did not know. The dark woman curtseyed. "Mr. Darcy?"

"Who are you?"

"Miss Mirela." She had a heavy Romani accent. "Your cousin Daniel brought Miss Darcy home."

Stupefied and confused, he managed to bow. "Thank you." Fortunately, Danny appeared. Unfortunately, Geoffrey thought he was lost again, in another time and place, because Danny was wearing his glasses, and looking right at him. His face was still scarred, but his eyes were open. "Danny?"

"Geoffrey. Cassandra's with your father." He bowed. "Did you find Mr. Hyde?"

"Your eyes – "

"Miss Mirela cut them open for me," he said. "Beneath the scar tissue, they healed. I needed them to fight Mr. Bower."

"So you found him first. Where is he?"

"Recovering," the gypsy said. "As much as he ever will."

Geoffrey had more questions but he had to make way for Mr. Emerson, who was helped in by a servant and Sarah. His ankle was broken as far as they could tell. "We need a doctor."

"Georgie?"

"Just the Vicar, I hope." Geoffrey saw his Uncle Bingley appearing from somewhere else in the poorly-lit room. "Uncle Bingley."

Before Bingley could say anything, Geoffrey was rushed by his mother. "Geoffrey! How could you let your sister go?" Yet she could not be all that upset, happy as she was to see them both.

Some confusion filled the room, as it was all sorted out and Sarah went to join her sister at her father's bedside. A doctor was called for Mr. Emerson, and since Geoffrey was now not required to run to find this Mr. Bower, he set aside his pistols and accepted a glass of wine.

Danny explained, "Miss Mirela and I met in Chesterton, and she has proved very resourceful. I needed someone to guide me around Harrogate, so she came, and she even performed some amateur surgery on my eyes before we went to find Cassandra."

"How is she?" He was referring to his sister.

Danny did not smile. "She will recover." Meaning, he would not say it all, and perhaps never would.

Geoffrey knocked on the door and was permitted entrance to his father's chambers. His father was sleeping, and Cassandra looked up at him with tired eyes, but did not leave their father's side or let go of his hand. "Geoffrey."

"Cassie." He lowered himself so they could properly hug. "Mr. Hyde is taken care of."

"She didn't."

"I don't know yet. I just know he will not be bothering you again." Her eyes were so red. He felt ashamed at making her cry again, even a little, or his own tears. He was supposed to be strong. "We would have gone to the ends of the earth to find you, but I am glad we did not have to."

"Did you see Danny?"

"I did."

"Is it not a miracle?"

"It is." This was not in dispute. "I cannot imagine what his parents will think."

He could hear hints of Cassie's old voice when she said, "Perhaps they will be more forgiving about his gypsy companion."

"Yes, perhaps."

But now was not the time for idle chatter. He kissed Cassie, reassured Anne, and excused himself to his own chambers for a minute, where Mr. Reynolds was there to relieve him of his coat and weaponry, and presented him with some very fine brandy. "She is found, and Hyde is likely dead." Yet the words did not entirely relieve him, though Mr. Reynolds nodded at them.

Geoffrey stepped into his bedchamber. It appeared empty, but the window was open. He went to close it, and heard a sob, and her arms around his legs. "Georgie." He knelt down, and she grabbed him with a ferocity he had not expected. "What is it?" She was always drained after a fight, but she was sobbing, and not with joy. He lifted her up and carried her to the bed, and after setting her down, he saw the stains of blood on her clothing.

"I didn't know," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. "I would not have done it. Please believe me."

He did not yet call for her maid. "Georgie, I will believe anything you say. Tell me what happened."

"I would not have killed him – like that. You know." She could not, for once, find her words. "If I knew I was pregnant."

* * *

The best doctor in Harrogate was having a busy night. There were two emergencies and two continuing illnesses or healing injuries in one hotel. A Mr. Emerson, a Vicar from Derbyshire who was not so soft-spoken when his bones were set, had a broken ankle. He quickly regained his composure and apologized, and the doctor administered enough laudanum to make him sleep the rest of the night and most of the next day. Then there was Mr. Darcy, still with that fever that was draining him, but he was sleeping peacefully and the daughter he was speaking of was found. The missing daughter did not permit him to inspect her and assured him she was fine.

Mr. Maddox, who would see an eye doctor in the morning for new glasses, had some winding story about slowly losing his vision, being scarred in Japan, then having his gypsy girlfriend cut his eyes open again the previous day, applying pressure to stop the bleeding, but every time he opened his eyes, the skin cracked and he bled again. When the doctor recommended he close them, Mr. Maddox refused, worried that they would simply close up again. The doctor told him to be monitored for infection and left him alone.

That left the wife of Mr. Darcy's son, a small redhead in a gown who controlled her hysterics long enough for him to do a private inspection in the water closet. Her husband, who had nerves of steel, held her hand the entire time and whispered encouraging words in a language the doctor didn't know.

"She has miscarried, most likely. From some sort of stress. I don't see any permanent damage here." He preferred to speak to the more sensible one, in this case the husband. "Do you have children, Mr. Darcy?"

"Three. A girl and two boys, but that isn't the issue now. How far was she along?"

"She must be familiar with the symptoms then. She could not have been very far along if she didn't notice them." When he looked, his patient on the floor was nodding. "A few weeks at most. Let her body rest and she will have a full recovery."

The husband agreed and thanked him, and he made his way out, and home for the night – until he was roused the next morning by the constable.

* * *

In their room, Geoffrey spoke to Georgie in English, Japanese, French – anything to talk her out of her state.

"Forgive me," she begged. "I didn't know."

"Then you do not need my forgiveness." He stroked her hair. There were still smudges in it from her hasty application and removal of her war paint, and the blue rings on her arms and legs would remain for weeks because she used ink. "Georgie, you will conceive again. It was a small price to pay for ridding the world of Mr. Hyde."

She did not seem convinced, but nor did she protest, and was eager when he mentioned bringing her mother in the room. He left her with her maid and gave the news to Jane.

"I'm so sorry."

"It was too early to see signs."

"But you're sure?"

"The doctor was fairly sure, yes."

She hugged him. "She will recover."

"I know."

Jane left him to comfort Georgie, for which, he was very grateful. He only told his mother. He could not bear to tell anyone else, but he had to. She was already so exhausted; it had little impact except sympathy. "I am sorry. I did not know you were expecting another child."

"No one did – not even Georgie. She would not have ... well, she would not have gone out tonight if she knew. She said that."

His mother had those reassuring eyes that he needed to see. "I do not doubt it. Let her rest – and get some yourself."

"Do you want to know what Mr. Hyde had to say?"

"Tomorrow. It can wait until tomorrow," she assured him, and only with that, and a final check on everyone else, was he able to rejoin his wife, now at least in bed.

"Aunt Bingley."

"Geoffrey." Jane touched his cheek. "You are so brave." She said her goodnights and left. Geoffrey nearly tore off his clothing to get into bed beside his wife, now in fresh clothing and dozing, but not asleep. When he wrapped his arm around her, she responded by tugging him closer. She wanted to be held.

"I did not mean it," Georgie said, referring to the miscarriage, as if it was her fault. "I will make it up to you."

"You do not have to," he said, "but I have no doubt that you will."

* * *

Elizabeth had a hard time convincing Cassandra not to keep vigil at her father's side. Darcy knew she was home, and she could be fetched – she would be only a room away – and Elizabeth knew Cassandra had not been living it up in comfort while they searched for her. She was weak, she had some bruises on her that she desperately tried to hide, and she evaded questions about her captivity. Elizabeth plied some information from Danny, but he was holding back more than he was telling, which meant terrible things had happened to her daughter and Danny did not want to be the messenger about that, something he had been called to be so often as of late in the family circle. It would come in time, when Cassandra was ready, and more importantly, when her father was recovered. Now, she needed to rest, and though it took the prodding of both of her sisters and her mother to remind her of that, Cassandra gave in to her own senses and collapsed on a bed prepared for her as quickly as possible, wearing her sister's gown. All of her jewelry, if she left with any, was gone. There was nothing on her that wasn't torn or stained, and Elizabeth ordered her gown disposed of before returning to her own chambers, to lie beside her husband.

He did stir when she joined him, and she checked his forehead. Still warm. "What is it? I'm here."

"Cassandra – I saw her."

"She is here. She is resting. Do you want her?"

He took a long time to formulate an answer, not because he was deciding but because his mind was taking longer than it usually needed to come to his conclusion. "No. Let her rest. I will see her in the morning." Darcy sounded happy to say the last words before he closed his eyes, murmuring, "I love you," before falling asleep.

"I love you, too," she said, and quickly followed him.

* * *

In the morning, Elizabeth Darcy had little time to lie beside her husband as she wanted to do, but had to rise to dress and greet their eager daughters, who wanted to see how their father was doing. Without the doctor, it was hard to tell if the fever was down as it was still present, but Darcy no longer called out in his sleep, and he woke when they came in the room and drank when they insisted. Cassandra looked brighter, but maybe it was a trick of the light. She had a long way to go before she would be restored to her old self, but Elizabeth was prepared for that wait.

Instead she sat down with Jane and Bingley to write as many letters as they could manage before the morning mail departed to inform the many worried relatives that Cassandra had been found. Everyone else was asleep, and they were still scribbling away when the constable came.

He was very straightforward. "I am inquiring after the death of a Mr. Hyde, and a Mr. Darcy went to see him last night. He is staying here?"

"He is in the room across the hall. That is Geoffrey Darcy, my son. My husband, Fitzwilliam Darcy, is very ill in the next room." She tried to register as much shock as possible that he was dead. "Yes, we were searching for him. We believe he ran off with our daughter, who was found last night being held by another man."

"Did she mention Mr. Hyde?"

"I haven't yet asked her. She is in quite a state."

He did not seem as concerned as they expected. "Mr. Hyde is dead?" Bingley said. "How?"

"That part of the investigation is still ongoing," the constable grumbled. "It seems he may have died of a heart attack, or maybe poisoning. We are checking the food. But you can understand why we came here."

Elizabeth fetched Sarah, who was most available, and she told the story of how they went to see Mr. Hyde about Cassandra, and he admitted to having run off with her and wanted a ransom of twenty-five thousand pounds. Their companion Mr. Emerson, Mr. Hyde's old friend, was the one who attacked him, but only got his ankle broken in the process after Mr. Hyde kicked him. Geoffrey, who was armed, did not attack. "We left because he gave us information on where Cassandra was being held."

Elizabeth and the constable went to Geoffrey to confirm the story, and he addressed them in his bathrobe. "My apologies. My wife is ill and I am not composed." He recounted the Hyde story from his perspective, and it matched Sarah's, though in his own words.

"Mr. Darcy, did you threaten Mr. Hyde's life?"

"I did, in so many words. I won't deny it. I held a weapon to him." He produced his jutte. "This is a Japanese weapon, meant to block swords."

"Did Mr. Hyde have a sword?"

"Not that I know of. It was just to intimidate him, really. I used this to intimidate people when I was a constable in Japan."

The constable nearly choked. "You were?"

"Yes, for a year in a small town called Imbe. I went with my wife shortly after our marriage and the birth of our daughter." He did not hold back. "I wanted to kill that man when he spoke of my sister, but that was because he was lewd and trying to provoke me. I have never killed in anger." That was _somewhat_ true. "I had pistols but I did not draw them."

"Only your Japanese weapon."

"Yes."

"Do you know anything about poisons, Mr. Darcy?"

Elizabeth watched him struggle to maintain his even-keel. "Yes. I know you can use poisons to kill rats, and if you ingest enough of it, you can kill a man. There's an antidote to it, a housekeeper once told me, but I don't know it."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Where is Mr. Hyde now?" The murder had not yet been mentioned, so Geoffrey played like he did not know he was dead.

"Dead. Possible poisoning. The landlady says he was alive when you left, and dead when she found him in the morning – probably for some time."

"Did you check the food? He had a plate in front of him, I remember."

"We are checking the food, but it doesn't look like a poisoning. The doctor suspects a heart attack." He tapped on his notepad. "Lucky for you."

"Deaths are almost never lucky, sir. I will not lie to you and say I wanted him to live a long and happy life after what he did to my sister, but I cannot sit quietly and wish well his death."

The constable was for the moment satisfied. "Thank you, Mr. Darcy. May I ask you to stay in town until this investigation is completed?"

"We are not in a condition to leave, so you can find us here. Please let us know when it is concluded."

The officer left, and Elizabeth did not hesitate to turn to her son. "How did she do it?"

"You know how she did it."

"I did not think it was possible."

"It takes a lot out of her. Sometimes, at great cost," Geoffrey said unhappily. "I do not think they will link it to her. I do not know how they could."

"And you used to be a constable."

He reddened. "Yes."

* * *

Mr. Emerson spent the day in his room. He was not in very great pain as long as he did not move, but he occasionally treated himself to laudanum, and he paid close attention to the doctor's orders to stay in bed. Mr. Bingley visited him, and the constable had some questions for him, and he asked for a deferral on a longer explanation on his past with Mr. Hyde until his mind was clearer. Since Mr. Hyde had died of a purported heart attack, the constable was willing to allow him that, and he spent the afternoon dozing.

The Darcys were very kind, putting him up in his own room and giving him a servant to constantly attend to him. A second entered, followed by Sarah Darcy, who ordered the door shut, with the two male servants as chaperones as she took the seat beside the bed. "Mr. Emerson."

"Miss Darcy. Forgive me if I do not rise."

"Very understandable." She looked at her hands, then back up at him. "What you did last night was a little reckless, but very brave."

"Thank you. I feel more the reckless than the brave part today."

"You've done a great deal for our family, and for Cassandra," she said. "May I ask you something?"

"Anything." And he did mean it, at least with her. Being in her arms was the best part of his night last night, even if it was while in incredible pain.

"The information you said Mr. Hyde had on you – was it what he called you last night?"

So there it was. Not that he hadn't expected it. "Yes."

"You know my cousin is a sodomite."

"Yes. I know – I knew quite awhile ago, when I still lived that lifestyle. I met him once under very inauspicious circumstances."

She frowned in confusion. "You never said anything."

"He had my trust and I had his. That was our code. Until he asked to court my sister, and I told her in confidence, and he retracted his suit. I am not proud of it, and I did not mean to harm him – I think he is a good man, but he was not right to marry my sister."

"Was Mr. Hyde – "

"No. We just knew each other from Cambridge, and he found out my secret. And thus, he blackmailed me, even though I had the ability in me to give up that life. I lived it and it made me only unhappy, and with something lacking. So I joined the church instead. I am very happy with my position, and I will be very sorry to lose it, but it was worth it to save Miss Cassandra."

"You assume you will lose it." She was not as harsh as he had imagined. He looked to her, but he could not read her expression. "You are reformed?"

"Yes."

"Charles said he could not reform, though he tried."

"We are not all the same. It is not so much that I rid myself of inclinations as that I had others – to have a life, a future, a family."

"You would be married."

"I would be – if someone would have me."

The room became too awkward. She curtseyed. "Do you need anything?"

"No – no. I am quite all right. Please thank the Darcys for me."

"I will." She curtseyed again, and raced out of the room, and though he could not move, his heart matched her own quick pace as it kept racing.

Maybe it was the laudanum, but for the first time since Mr. Darcy appeared in his house with a rifle, Mr. Emerson found reason to hope.

.... Next Chapter - The Gypsy


	40. The Gypsy

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 40 – The Gypsy

Geoffrey was correct in his assertion that they would not be traveling anywhere soon. Georgie was severely weakened and needed several days in bed to recover. Mr. Emerson was laid-up and would be still after his return to Derbyshire, which would have to be a slow and careful journey. And while Darcy showed signs of recovery, his body was slower than his patience would allow. Fortunately his mind remained clouded and they were spared telling him all of the details until his fever broke two days later, and he was strong enough to demand specifics.

"This Mr. Hyde," he said in a private conversation with Elizabeth, "he is dead?"

"Yes."

"Who killed him?"

"Georgiana."

He did not look surprised. "Can it be traced to her?"

"The investigation is ongoing, but we doubt it."

"And the man who was holding Cassandra on Hyde's behalf?"

"Crippled, but alive."

"By Georgiana?"

"By Danny Maddox."

Again, there was little surprise. "I thought I saw him before – with his glasses. I must have been dreaming."

"You were not." At his confusion, she explained, "His vision was still mostly intact and had even stabilized when he was injured in Japan. As the damage to his eyes healed, the scars kept them closed. When it came time to rescue Cassandra, he took a chance and had them opened."

"He found a surgeon that would do that?"

"He had a woman do it – a gypsy. How he knows her, he won't say."

Darcy did not speak quickly, as all of this information went through his mind until it registered. "Lady Maddox will be pleased."

Elizabeth burst into giggles. "It is not like that."

"You are sure?"

"No, but it is what he says. So far."

Even he smiled a little. "So far. Yes, very pleased."

"Indeed." She had to move on. "Mr. Emerson is here."

"I've not seen him."

"His ankle is broken. He tried to fight Mr. Hyde and lost. He cannot be moved from his room for the moment."

Darcy nodded. "We are caring for him?"

"Yes, we are."

"Good." Pleased with her decision, he moved into less happy territory. "How is Cassandra?"

"She has been through a terrible ordeal. Physically she is well, but she will not be herself again for a long time, I fear. And she has apologized to you many times over."

"I remember it. She does not have to apologize for anything."

"Try convincing her of that. You two will apologize to each other until you're blue in the face, but nothing can be undone. We have only a more pleasant future to look forward to." She squeezed his hand. "When you are recovered."

Darcy still slept a great deal, most of the day, but the doctor declared him out of danger after a week of illness. That all of his children were there to nurse him back to health made a great impact on his recovery. Bingley and Jane were also there to cheer him up, and not let his frustration get the better of him.

He called in Georgie, who curtseyed. "Uncle Darcy."

"Georgiana." He gave her a little smile. "I've just heard the case was closed."

"Yes. Mr. Hyde's death was ruled a spontaneous apoplexy."

"Strange in a man so young," he said. "Whatever you did and however you did it, I am most grateful."

"I did it for Cassandra."

"_I_ should have done it for Cassandra." Darcy frowned. "But it worked out all the same. At least I can rest easily that someone is guarding our family. I mean Geoffrey, of course, but he knows when to ask for help – unlike myself."

"Uncle Darcy."

"I am sorry for your loss." He did not elaborate what he meant by it, but they both knew. What she didn't know was who told him, or maybe he just found out somehow. "You suffer readily on other people's behalf. A useful trait, but it may kill you someday if you are not careful, and I will not have my son a widower."

"Of course, Uncle." She kissed him on the cheek, and let him rest.

* * *

Geoffrey was eager to get Georgiana back to Pemberley and their children as soon as possible. His father was not well enough to be moved safely yet, and Cassandra would not bear the crowds of eager relatives without her father and sisters, so they chose to remain. Geoffrey specifically sought his father's permission to return.

"I told you to stay there in the first place," was his father's reply, without any recrimination. "Go home and see to my grandchildren and your wife. That is what you can do for me while I am stuck in this G-dawful town."

"Thank you, Father."

When they were completely sure that Darcy was well on the road to recovery, Geoffrey and Georgie departed, taking Danny and Mirela with them. Darcy withheld comment until they were gone, and then spoke only to Bingley on it. "Your sister may have an apoplexy of her own, and this time not caused by Georgiana."

"She saved Cassandra's life and gave Danny his sight back."

"That does not change it."

Bingley chuckled. "I know. I almost wish I could be there. But Danny has not declared himself."

"Were she not gypsy, they would be married by now, out of necessity if not desire."

"This is probably true." Bingley looked at the pile of letters on the nightstand. "Should I read to you of all the people who send their love and best wishes for your health?"

"G-d, no. I can only take so much in a day."

"You still could use the excuse of Mrs. Darcy answering on your behalf."

"I am tempted to take it." Darcy picked at the meat on his lunch tray, but could not bring himself to eat it. "So what of the Vicar and my daughter?"

"Sarah?"

"I only know one has found many reasons to visit him out of the three."

"She is very chaperoned."

Darcy grunted.

"Darcy, come off it. Two months ago she swore she would never marry. Let us hope a bit."

"You just like weddings."

"I will not deny that I do, but that is not my only consideration. The future happiness of my niece is another one." He softened his tone, to appear more serious to Darcy. "I think he is willing to wait for your forgiveness."

"That may be awhile."

"I am only saying what I suspect. For the rest, you will have to ask him yourself."

Bingley, of course, found this more amusing than Darcy did.

* * *

"Mr. Emerson."

It was not the Darcy sister he was expecting. He straightened himself into a more upright position. "Miss Cassandra."

"May I enter?"

As there was a servant in the room, he nodded. "Please." He gestured towards the chair by his bed. Aside from his injury, he was quite well, and made the day pass by reading. "What can I do for you, Miss Cassandra?"

Her voice was so small, compared to the strong-willed creature she used to be. Maybe in time, her old self would return. "I know you went through a lot for me, Mr. Emerson."

"I felt obliged. I brought that monster into the community."

"But we hid from you."

"Then shall we call it even and forgive?"

She nodded. "There is something I must ask of you, Mr. Emerson."

"By all means."

Her hands knotted together to vent some of her nervous energy. "You care for my sister."

"I cannot say, Miss Cassandra."

"Trenton ... Mr. Hyde ... he told me your secret. I will not tell, on the condition that you are honest with my sister and myself. Is it true?"

"Yes." It was not nearly as hard to say it to Cassandra Darcy as it was to say it to Sarah Darcy. "It is true that there are terrible sins in my past, which are behind me now. And I have already admitted as much to her, as best I could."

"But you care for her?"

"Yes."

"Enough to marry her?"

"I do not know yet. There is time for that. One must be cautious in matters of love." He reddened, realizing who he was saying this to. "I did not mean to preach."

"It comes naturally to you."

"Yes."

"You are a good churchman. I think Father will not reprimand you for your part in this, after all you have done. If he does, I will support you."

"Thank you, Miss Cassandra." And he truly meant it. "Thank you very much."

* * *

When the carriage stopped at a watering hole, Geoffrey took the opportunity to take Danny aside. Danny still walked with a cane, because even with new glasses his sight was far from perfect, and because it came naturally to him. Geoffrey found it odd to have Danny look him right in the eyes after years of a bowed head, but that was not what he was there for. "What are your intentions with Miss Mirela?"

"I have tried to live my life one day at a time," Danny said. _He_ was not used to having to look away when he was embarrassed.

"That is not always possible. You must either cut her off now or state your intentions."

"I love her," Danny said with great emotion, "but I do not yet know if she loves me. It is not easy for her to marry a _gorgio_."

"A what?"

"A non-gypsy. They have their codes of honor, too. Only desperation drives them to begging and mugging."

"Your mother will never consent."

"I do not require her consent. And when have I ever waited for her approval? If I had, I would not have done half the things that have made up my life."

Geoffrey grinned. "Good luck, then."

"Thank you. I have a feeling I will need it."

* * *

The carriages' slow approach to Pemberley meant there was plenty of time for the residents to make their way out to greet their parents. William made it first of all the children. "Mummy!"

Georgie knelt and hugged him. "My baby."

"He's just doing that because he's hiding from his Nurse," her Aunt Maddox said, quickly following. "Georgie. Geoffrey. Welcome home. The other carriage must be – Oh my G-d." And Caroline Maddox was not one to take the L-rd's name in vain. "Daniel Maddox Junior!"

Danny stepped into Pemberley, grinning as his mother raced to him with more enthusiasm than the children raced to Georgie. "Mother."

"Look at you! This isn't a trick? Because it's a very evil – "

"No, Mother, it's not." He looked her in the eyes. "You look well."

"You didn't write them?" Geoffrey asked.

"Write us about what?" Daniel Maddox Senior, still very much a cripple, walked in, his hand along the wall. "What am I missing? Hello, Danny."

Danny looked over his mother's shoulder, tears in his eyes, which stung the wounds. "Hello, Father."

"Are you well?"

"Yes, Father."

"Are you going to drag this out?" Georgie said. "Uncle Maddox, he can see."

"What?"

"He's wearing his glasses."

Danny nodded. "The eyes healed beneath the scar. My bad eye is mostly blurry, but my right eye was saved. It was simply a matter of cutting open the scar tissue."

His father looked up, to the extent that he could, which was lifting his head. "You cut open your own eyes?"

"No, Miss Mirela did it. Father, may I introduce – "

But his father's voice cut into him like a knife. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that could have been? You could have injured a nerve – "

"I was already blind."

"You could have gotten an infection and died! And then who would be crying tears of joy? No one! You should have told me." Dr. Maddox flailed around, and Caroline briefly abandoned her son to catch her husband, and hold his arm.

"Daniel," she said sternly, "our son can see."

"I know G-ddamnit, I'm trying to talk some sense – I don't want – He should have told me. He shouldn't have gone without a decent surgeon. There were risks. He should have ... " But Caroline whispered to him, and he ceased his mumbling.

Geoffrey and Georgie, never having seen Dr. Maddox shout at his son, stepped away awkwardly. Danny nodded to Mirela, and she went with the Darcys, who gave the Maddoxes some space.

"Father." Danny approached him, still walking with his cane but no longer using it to find his way. "I wanted to tell you in person because I knew it would upset you."

"How dare you presume to know my feelings! I'm your father, you can't presume to know anything!" He ignored Caroline, who was trying to comfort him, and she begged the servant for a chair instead. "You ungracious – I am not jealous of my own son!"

Danny did not contradict him. He looked down, as if his father's eyes were piercing into him, even though his father's eyes were, and forever would be, sightless white orbs. Embarrassed, Dr. Maddox stepped back and lost his footing, but Danny and Caroline caught him, and helped him find the chair, where he could sit and weep.

His senses were returning to him, but not his usual calm voice, and he grabbed his son closer, embracing him. "I never wanted you to go blind. I didn't want this curse on you."

"I know."

"I felt so guilty, every step of the way – I am so happy now, part of me is. I am humiliated for the other part." He held Danny by his collar and shook him. "Please forgive me. Please forgive this foolish, irrational old man – "

"Father, please. I forgive you, even though I am not harmed and it is not necessary." Danny knelt so he was facing his father directly. "Yes, I considered it for a long time, wondering if there was some vestiges of sight behind the scars that forced my eyes closed, but I went to surgeons, and they weren't eager to do something so experimental. Not good surgeons, anyway. They were not you. When you were young, I know, you would have tried it in a heartbeat if you thought it would help me. So I set the idea aside until Cassandra went missing, and I needed my vision to face her captor. Miss Mirela said she was good with a knife, and I taught her how to stop the bleeding– "

"Miss Mirela? That gypsy that was just here?"

"Yes, Mother."

His father stopped crying long enough to laugh. "You've been seeing a gypsy?"

"Yes."

"And she went to Harrogate with you?"

"She met me there. She wanted to help, to pay me back for feeding her when she was starving. Our relationship is not so advanced, but she helped save Cassandra's life. And she was the surgeon, even though she didn't want to be. She couldn't bear to harm me but she did because I begged her to."

"So you can see?"

"Yes."

Dr. Maddox sighed, settling down, and Caroline helped him find his handkerchief so he could wipe his face. The brief burst of absurdity was gone, and the feelings that caused it slowly departing. "What do I look like?"

"Much the same that I remember you."

"My hair is all white now, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"When I was a boy it was the fashion – the powder and all. My brother did it once and hated it. He couldn't make it look right with his hair so curly, and the powder made him sneeze. He wore it for a single ball and swore it off." Dr. Maddox smiled. "So now, you can enjoy your father basking in last century's fashion."

"I suppose I can."

He held out his hands and Danny took them. "I am happy for you – I cannot begin to describe it. I did not expect it, and I am old, and my capacity for surprises is limited. I am so happy for you, and wish you many more years of good sight. All that pain – I should not have acted that way. I lost my senses."

"We all do from time to time," Caroline said. "Especially young men and women."

"Or young men and gypsies," Dr. Maddox chuckled, his old humor returning as he embraced his son and slapped him on the back. "I only ever wanted the best for you. I still do."

"I know."

"You have been given a precious, precious gift, but you already know that. That it took a gypsy woman to give it to you is the least of my concerns."

"Daniel," Caroline said, addressing her husband, "you're still in a state."

"No, now I'm not. I am not giving my blessing, but I am saying, I will welcome her presence as an accomplished surgeon. We could always use another one around."

* * *

"What are they talking about?" Alison asked, and her father moved her away from the French glass doors again and back towards her mother and Mirela on the couch. After they were all properly introduced to Miss Mirela, Brian settled in his mother's arms, William played with Mala, and Alison was ever curious as to the more interesting conversation occurring in the next room.

"Dani-san is explaining things to his parents, who are very surprised. They thought he would be blind forever."

"He got better?"

"He had surgery, and now he can see," Geoffrey said.

"So why is Dr. Maddox upset?"

"Because the surgery was dangerous," he answered, which was partially true. "He is already over it, I'm sure. Everything will be fine."

"Is Aunt Cassie all right?"

"She is better now."

"Is she coming home?"

"Yes," Geoffrey said with a grin, "she is."

* * *

The Darcys moved to the dining room, to be properly refreshed with tea and lunch. They waited patiently for the Maddoxes to join them. Dr. Maddox was led by his wife, looking very shamefaced. "Forgive this doddering old man, Mr. Darcy, for intruding on your welcome."

"Think nothing of it," Geoffrey said, rising to greet him, and the others followed suit.

Danny proceeded to Mirela. "Mother, Father, may I present Miss Mirela? Mirela, these are my parents, Sir Daniel and Lady Maddox."

She curtseyed, and Caroline slowly returned with her own. "It is not our home, but I assume you are welcome to it."

"Thank you for helping find Miss Cassandra," Dr. Maddox said. Unlike his wife, he did not cringe when addressing Mirela. He was quite pleasant, very much his old self, if a tired one. Geoffrey, at the head of the table, bid them to sit and eat. And so they all ate together, some happily rejoicing in the reunion and others in an uneasy truce. Mala, who did not distinguish one from the other, took table scraps from anyone who offered.

"She'll get fat," Georgie said to Geoffrey's offering part of a slice of ham to the hound.

"There are worse things," he answered, and they left it at that.

.... Next Chapter - The Courtship of Sarah Darcy


	41. The Courtship of Sarah Darcy

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 41 – The Courtship of Sarah Darcy

"Your nephew Charles has written you," Elizabeth said. "He wishes you a speedy recovery."

"He makes it sound so easy," Darcy replied. He was sitting in a chair now, but the toll the long fever took on his body was a harsh one. His mind bounced back quicker, and with the return of his senses came his stubborn reasoning – at times an endearing quality, but also frustrating to him and those around him. "How is Charles?"

"He is in Paris, or was when he wrote this letter, in case Cassandra fled there. He has a nice home on the shore in the countryside. Eliza and Mr. Turner can tell you more about it, I'm sure."

He waved it off; he did not want to know the particulars so much as pass the time. "What else?"

"If you would have him, your brother and his wife would like to visit Pemberley since they are already in Liverpool. They will understand if the timing is too poor."

"No. It's been too long since they've been to Derbyshire." Darcy found Grégoire's presence calming in the past, and no doubt it would be the same. "I will write them an invitation."

"After you eat."

"All I do is eat."

"You barely ate for a week. You have much to make up for, Mr. Darcy." She brought the tray over and set it before him.

He ate his food, but slowly and meticulously. "Have you spoken to Cassandra?"

"About what?"

"About her disappearance ... everything. You have always been better at talking to her."

"I have not pressed her. She was in a bad state when she arrived, and so were you. There will be time."

He did not look pleased. "I am well enough now to know what _bad state_ my daughter was found in without fear that I will relapse into fever and die. I know of Mr. Hyde's fate. Is the man who held her still alive?"

"Yes, but crippled. Danny assured me he would never harm a woman again."

Darcy waited so long before speaking again that she'd almost thought he had let the subject go, but he did not. "Danny is like his father – could not harm a flea. For him to go to such measures, I can only make a terrible conclusion – unless it is contradicted. But you cannot do that without lying to me, can you?"

"Why must you do this to yourself?"

"I am not so old and feeble that I cannot know the truth. Was my daughter – our daughter – violated, what remaining honor thoroughly stolen? I must know the truth of it if I am to comprehend the extent of my failure."

Elizabeth looked away, and when she turned back, her eyes were no longer dry. Darcy softened his expression. "So it is true."

"You are not a failure. She did not run to spite you, or because we raised her wrong. She made a decision in haste, not knowing its consequences. Who could have known the formerly kind Mr. Hyde would turn so cruel?"

"I could have asked."

"You did everything possible you could have done – and much more than that. And she is recovered now, and would not want you in mourning over your fatherly stature."

"That is why I am having this conversation with you first." After which, Elizabeth looked at him in confusion, and he put the tray aside and beckoned her close. "Though it has pained me to do so, I have never shied from the truth. My father did and it brought disaster on our family. That is the lesson I learned from him too long after his death." He took her hand. "I have every right to know what happened to my daughter, do I not?"

"You do."

"And I will not have my wife bear the burden of knowing by herself. I have the curious notion that she has been hiding her own disgust with herself as a mother and protector of her daughter because I was the one who so foolishly put his own life in peril, and she has suffered in silence. I will not have it, Elizabeth." He kissed her palm, gently and tenderly. "When Cassandra is ready to put it behind her, I have to be ready to help her. And you feel the same."

"You know me too well."

"So in one respect I am not derelict in my familial duties," he said. "Lizzy, where would I be without you?"

"I do not know." She wrapped an arm around him, wanting to feel that warm, sensible, considerate husband of hers and know he was not lost to self-hatred and the long fever. "I would ask the same question of myself."

"And neither of us know, thank goodness. So in that, we are even."

* * *

Elizabeth Darcy had a more difficult time with her daughter. She was Darcy's daughter, so her retreat into herself was faint, but before long she was silent where she should have laughed, and the light refused to return to her eyes. She lost interest in what little activities their rooms afforded them, but she avoided any discussion of returning home, where there would be people waiting to see her.

Having done it with Darcy once, she would not let another person so close to her fall into the abyss of shame. As soon as Darcy and Mr. Emerson were recovered enough to travel, they would return to Pemberley, and the Vicar to his house, with a servant hired to care for him in his convalescence. Elizabeth insisted that Cassandra join their card games, and that she help her sister with her sewing, as Sarah was not half the seamstress her younger sister was. Anne even got her out for a walk around the city, which could be quite beautiful as the leaves turned from their green to bright oranges, reds, and yellows. Still, she would not be cheered, and Elizabeth pushed the doctor to permit Darcy to travel, as Cassandra would not leave her father. That night, she was frank with her daughter.

"You will know happiness again," she said, "and all the pleasures you once felt, and more. I promise."

"Mama, you said to only make promises you could keep."

"I did," Elizabeth replied. "And I still promise."

* * *

The return to Pemberley was cautious, and took twice as long as it should have. By the end of the journey, even a tired Darcy was eager to finish the journey and be welcomed home to his beloved Pemberley by his son and grandchildren. The many servants were overjoyed to see him, and he soaked it in on behalf of Cassandra, allowing her to make a quieter entrance while the focus was on getting him to bed after his travels.

Mr. Emerson was sent home with a servant to assist him in his own recovery, as he had some trouble getting about without a great deal of pain and the possibility of causing a new break or sprain was always there. Darcy was not there to see him off, but Elizabeth and Geoffrey gave their grateful goodbyes, and promised to visit. Sarah was there, but did not say anything, only smiled at him, and he smiled wearily back.

After a celebratory dinner, the Bingleys retreated to Kirkland, taking the Maddoxes with them. Miss Mirela accompanied them, but her status as a guest remained somewhat in question – a question Elizabeth knew better than to ask. She would get it from her sister at a later date.

Cassandra could not avoid the servants, who were carefully instructed to give her space, but she was disappointed to learn that her lady-maid had been dismissed. "It's too cruel."

"Cassandra, she failed you."

"But it's my failure."

"She should not have covered for it." Elizabeth tried to soften it in her voice, but in her heart she had no sympathy for the woman who was in charge of her daughter's health and had her confidence, and let her abuse and almost destroy her body. "I'm sure she will find new work with her many years of experience, and you will have a new one of your own choosing."

That task was put on the list of things to do, but most of the next day was spent with their new guests. Grégoire and Caitlin arrived from Liverpool, and were the first people Cassandra was willing to hug without it being initiated by the other side. She cried on Caitlin's shoulder, as the woman said soothing words to her that her Irish brogue made largely incomprehensible.

Grégoire sat with his brother, who insisted he was strong enough to meet him in the chapel, even if he needed help getting there. "My doctor wants me to use a cane."

"Then you should use it."

"I know – it's my damned pride." Darcy sat down on a cushion on the hard pew and dismissed the servant. "It always is that particular deadly sin that is my downfall."

"Considering the other six, I would say you have not made an awful choice." Grégoire was more than a decade younger than him, and still had color in his hair and beard, though it was sprinkled with grey. He kept the beard relatively short, perhaps to avoid looking crazier than he already did. "I always had faith in your recovery."

"And Cassandra's?" Darcy did not mince words with something so obvious. The spark that made her Cassandra was gone from her.

"She is surrounded by loved ones. She will recover in time."

"How long is time?" Darcy could admit things to Grégoire, in this private space, that he could admit to no one but Elizabeth, and would not burden her with every one of his nagging thoughts. "Every minute is torture to me."

"I know you are not intending to sound that way, but you cannot think only of yourself in this."

"It was my failure – "

"And your feelings are negligible compared to hers. What she has no doubt gone through was her pain alone, or so she feels. Even with her brother and sisters, and the cousins who will swarm to her, she undoubtedly feels desperately alone."

Darcy was desperate. "Can you tell her she is not? Can you communicate something to her that is beyond anyone else's abilities?"

"No." Grégoire was resolute. "But Caitlin can."

* * *

"He was me first 'usband," Caitlin said, showing Cassandra the portraiture. It was really more of a sketch in a wooden frame, so that his features could barely be made out. "It wus de nicest ting he ever did for me. 'ad it made as a weddin' present. Only ting from him I still 'ave."

"You keep it with you? Does Uncle Grégoire know?"

"I asked 'im aboyt it before we married, did he want me ter keep it. I'd gotten rid av everything of Neil's – an' dare wasn't much – long before. Grégoire said it wus my decision." Caitlin accepted the little frame back. "I kept it case I wanted ta throw it in da fire, if I got really angry. But I already did dat wi' everythin' else, an' I got no more hate left. So Grégoire said, 'tis a testament to me mercy." She laughed. "'e's a queer little man, me husband. I'm lucky ta have 'im." She put the portraiture away in her bag. "Wus a long way ta go, 'tween here an' me bein' told he killed me babe, 'is own kid."

Cassandra looked down at her heads, but did not speak.

"When yeh want teh talk, I'll be 'appy to listen."

"Thank you, Aunt Bellamont." She stood and curtseyed, then left the sitting room. Caitlin watched her go. Cassandra wasn't ready, but Caitlin was ready to wait.

* * *

One person who could not wait was making it known at Kirkland, if privately in the garden behind the house.

"Your family," Mirela said. "It's too much."

"My mother will warm to you, I promise. She needs time."

"It's not just that. I wish it was." She took his hand, something she was still accustomed to doing from his days of infirmary. "This ... society is too much for me. The dinners and the dress and the pointless conversation – "

"Do you love me?"

She looked up. "What?"

"Do you love me?" He could open his eyes now without pain or bleeding. The lids were healed as much as they would. "I understand if you run, Mirela. I just want to know."

Her voice broke a little when she said it. "I love you."

"Did you love me when I was still blind and useless?"

"You were never useless."

"My question stands." Danny was not harsh with her, the very opposite, but he was insistent.

"Yes." Her answer was barely audible, but it was there. "I did. I do."

"I cannot ask from you the impossible, and it seems that way to you, but I love you. I want to marry you." He squeezed her hand. "Would you consider it?"

"I cannot live in that house, with those people – "

Some pride slipped into his voice. "Those people are my family, Mirela."

"I'm sorry, Danny. But you know what I mean."

"Yes. I know what you mean. And though it will break my heart when you leave now, I will understand. But I ask you to consider it. And I promise you, we will not have a house like this. We will find something more comfortable." Danny managed a smile. "I am used to more austere surroundings, even if I never saw my monastery. I am uncomfortable myself, and I was raised in it."

She leaned in, and quickly kissed him on the cheek. "I will consider it, gorgio."

"I will wait for you, gypsy."

She stepped backwards, watching him until she reached the forest, and then she was gone.

* * *

When Danny crossed the patio and returned to the sunroom, he was not altogether surprised to find his father there, and bowed. "Father."

"So she left." He did not look pleased. "I am sorry."

"She said she would think on it."

"I will tell your mother not to comment on it, or to do so only to me."

"Thank you."

"Your mother says all of my years of reading medieval romance have made me a hopeless romantic, and I will not deny it. If she is meant for you, she will return to you – or you may have to chase her a bit. Who knows." Dr. Maddox grinned. "You seem up to it."

* * *

The next few days brought the return of Eliza and Matthew Turner, eager to be reunited with their son and to shower their nieces and nephews with gifts. The Maddoxes departed Kirkland, presumably being followed by Mirela, whom no one could find the right words to make a comment on. Danny kept his feelings to himself to the end.

The Bellamonts remained at Pemberley, and Georgiana and William Kincaid made that an excuse to visit Pemberley and see Cassandra, who put on a little smile but was not her old self – but nor did anyone ask her to be. Elizabeth fretted behind closed doors, but her attempts to speak to her daughter were brief and Darcy, who felt that time was the best balm, consoled his wife.

Cassandra did go out with Sarah, who didn't say _she_ wanted to pay a visit to Mr. Emerson, but that a visit should be paid, and they all knew perfectly well what she meant. He walked with a crutch, but it was tiring and dangerous, so his movements were rather restricted and he was overjoyed to have any visitors, much less the Darcys, one Darcy sister in particular.

There was a flicker of the old Cassandra to be seen when she relayed what happened later to Anne and Georgie. "He barely looked at me the whole time. He was _staring_ at Sarah."

"Did she notice?"

"How could she? She was busy staring back at him!"

The visits were twice weekly, and they saw him on Sundays, when he gave an abbreviated sermon and let the curate perform the rest of the service. He spoke of the importance of family, always a popular topic in Derbyshire.

Mr. Emerson's first public outing was the harvest festival at Pemberley, held after the leaves turned and before it turned cold. There was already a considerable chill, but Emerson had hard cider warming his veins when he approached Sarah, still limping with his one crutch. "Miss Darcy."

"Mr. Emerson."

"Considering my past, and my actions, I will understand if you reject me. I have decided now that what occurred in my college days, while at the time something I subscribed to, is not how I want to live my life. The pleasure was not so great for me to eschew all others, especially greater ones. I will be unhappy, but I will bear it, if you do not respond positively to my request to court you. Nonetheless I will ask – may I ask for your father's permission?"

Sarah already had the answer long before he was done rambling, but she thought he was adorable when he was nervous. "Yes."

"This would be agreeable to you?"

"This would be most agreeable to me."

He grinned. "Perhaps I should ask your father now, while his mood is good."

"You are a quick learner, Mr. Emerson, and very wise already in the ways of my family. Yes, please catch him now, while he is happy, and maybe a little drunk."

* * *

Mr. Emerson did find Mr. Darcy, and did receive the reply he was looking for. Whether Darcy regretted it in the morning, he never found out, because the next day the Darcys departed to London after the express arrived.

Cynthia Wickham was in labor, and by the time they arrived, she had born George Wickham a son. Unlike his sister, the boy had a few strands of black hair like his father. However much they praised the infant's arrival, they could not ply from George the decision about the name, which he said they made prior to her confinement.

When she was well enough, Cynthia Wickham stood proudly at the alter at St. George's beside her husband, before her family and his, as the boy was baptized Richard Wickham, breaking three generations of tradition. Geoffrey and Georgiana stood as godparents, and the infant announced his exhaustion with being poked and prodded with a wail, and would not settle again until he was in his mother's arms.

"I will not have my son saddled with any of the weight of history," George said, in response to the unasked question by his Uncle Darcy. "He will know every bit of it when he is old enough, but he will be free from it."

"Also, my children are now free to name a son George without much confusion."

George went red at the implication that he might like something like that. "Yes, that is true."

.... Next Chapter - Lost in the Snow


	42. Lost in the Snow

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 42 – Lost in the Snow

Nothing, not even the hint that Sarah Darcy was to be married in the spring, or the holidays that were upon them, could cheer Danny Maddox, Junior. He moped around Chesterton, smiling only when required or for his nephew and nieces. He went into the woods, a bizarre experience at first, to see all the places he had used as a meeting ground with Mirela for the first time since regaining his vision, but they appeared cold and lonely places without her presence and he only returned in hopes that it would be different.

"You deserve a woman who if she runs out the door, you can at least catch," Frederick said, in a desperate bid to cheer him up. "And I heard gypsies are quite speedy."

Danny did not respond. The one thing he did revel in was seeing Stewart and Danielle Maddox for the first time. Stewart did heavily resemble his father, while Danielle favored her mother, and not just because of genders. Like his father, Stewart was a wild man, constantly wanting to play instead of study. Danielle, his goddaughter, was quieter, but then again she was much younger. She still loved to sleep in his arms; even though he meditated every day, it was the only time he felt at peace.

Brian and Nadezhda Maddox joined them, making it just in time before it began to snow, and would not let up for nearly a day leading up to Christmas. "I knew it was going to snow. I could feel it in my back," Brian said.

"That's just an old wives tale," his brother said.

"Then I am a very old wife."

Before dinner, they were joined by a fellow physician and professor at Cambridge, Dr. William Tell and his wife. Their children had moved to America and they lived alone, so Dr. Maddox regularly invited them for meals, and Dr. Tell even politely got to ask to inspect Danny's eyes, which he consented to. "Incredible. The body has an amazing capacity to heal."

But that night, the Tells were late. "I'm so sorry – a very late appointment. An emergency," he explained as they were welcomed and their coats removed. "A factory man with a house way out in the woods found a woman half-frozen and, not knowing what to do, brought her to the University. I was still in my office and someone must have sent him to me, and I had to see her to the hospital."

"Has she been identified?"

"No, and she may never be, if she doesn't live. She's a gypsy."

Dr. Maddox waited for his son to say it. "Excuse me – I must go."

"I'll go with you," Dr. Maddox offered. "My doctor's license might be good for something. Dr. Tell, Mrs. Tell, please excuse us. Caroline, don't wait up. We'll be back for church."

"You have to eat."

"It can wait." With that, father and son were gone, into the cold and clear night. The snow had ceased, and all was calm despite the many services in Cambridge proper, not more than a five-minute carriage ride from Chesterton. The roads were not clear, so it took them twenty to arrive at the University hospital.

The nurse there recognized him. "Professor Maddox – "

"You're holding a gypsy woman, found in the snow," Danny said, breathless. "Where is she?"

"Do you know her?"

"Possibly," the doctor said. "Please take us to her."

It wasn't a large hospital, but when the nurse indicated the room, Danny was not the patient son who aided his father. He abandoned him to run ahead and into the warm room, with the bed near the fireplace. "Mirela."

Her lips were blue and her skin was moist, either from melted snow or sweating under the heat of the flame. She was wearing a gown used for surgical patients, probably all they had. It was a student clinic, not a major hospital.

"Mirela," Danny said again, and took her hand in his. It was still cold.

Dr. Maddox finally made it to the doorway, but did not enter the room proper. "This is the patient, I assume."

"Yes, Professor."

"What is her prognosis?"

"She has some frostbite on her nose and fingers, but no injuries. We tried to heat her as fast as we could. She was probably in a state of exhaustion so she's been sleeping the whole time."

"Thank you."

"You can call for me if you need me, Professor."

"Yes, of course. Thank you." He did not remember her name, but he had a feeling it would not be necessary. He stepped a bit away from the doorway, to allow his son some privacy.

* * *

Danny was adamant. "Mirela. Please come back to me." He wiped his eyes, rubbing his glasses on his chest to dry them. "Please don't leave me again."

She stirred, but did not open her eyes. "Danny?"

"Yes. Yes, it's me." He tightened his grip, holding her hand against his chest so she could feel his heartbeat if she could feel anything through the bandages wound around her hands. "I am here and I will never leave you."

She opened her eyes. He could not imagine that he might never have seen them, had they not attempted surgery. They were such a beautiful shade of brown, not like ordinary eyes at all. "Danny."

"Mirela."

"I was – I was coming back to you."

"I am glad to hear it. I was looking for you."

"I didn't make it that far." Her voice was hoarse, and he insisted on making her drink even if the tea was no longer hot before she could speak again. "I went to the south, to see the roads we used to travel, and they were gone. All paved. One of them – they put train tracks over it. I don't know where my family is. Maybe they died in the workhouses."

"I'm sorry."

"I expected it, but I had to see it." She had to see that she could not go back. "I thought when I was in the woods last night, and I was freezing, that I would never see you again."

He smiled. "I am glad to report that you were wrong."

"Someone found me."

"A worker. He brought you here, and the doctor is one of my father's friends. This is the Cambridge University clinic." He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. "I heard it was a gypsy and I knew it was you. Not just because of that – because I knew you were looking for me. Or maybe I was just projecting, because I was looking for you. Every day. Every day since you've gone."

"I do not want to be an English housewife, Danny."

"I do not want an English housewife," he said. "I want you."

She would have smiled, but her face was cracked from the cold. "They told me I have frostbite. It stings."

"I will get you some medicine."

"Will you stay with me?"

"Of course." He did not even leave the room, just hung in the doorway and peered out to see his father sitting on a bench. "Father – "

"You wish to stay with her tonight?"

"Yes."

"I cannot, and would not stop you. Though I will remark that since you are not a physician, staying alone with a woman all night is highly improper, and can only be rectified by a marriage, lest people think the woman is a hussy and the man disreputable."

He grinned. "I know, Father. Do you approve?"

"If she is the one to make you happy, as she so clearly is, I can think of nothing that would prevent my approval." He stood, and called for the nurse to escort him out. "Happy Christmas, Danny."

"Happy Christmas, Father."

Danny watched his father tip his hat and disappear down the corridor, then returned to Mirela. There was a jar marked laudanum on the stand beside her, and a spoon, and he poured her a dose and had her drink it. She said it helped with the pain, but it muddled her mind. "I am lost."

"No, you are found."

"Stay with me, Danny."

"As you wish."

Danny Maddox spent Christmas Eve in a most unchristian manner, sleeping in the chair beside the cot that held an unmarried woman, holding her hand and resting his head on her shoulder as he dropped off to a better sleep, despite his position, than he had found in months.

* * *

It took the entire twelve days of Christmas for Mirela to regain her strength, and for her wounds to deal. Her frostbitten hands and skin cracked and bled, and Danny was there to rewind the bandages once she was moved to Chesterton. She had never been inside before, and he wheeled her around, showing her all the different rooms his mother took great pride in, but especially his chambers, which were done as closely to Japanese style as could be managed. "My brother has a place for me like this in his home, and my Uncle Brian and Her Highness have a wing of their house built to be Japanese. I travel a lot. I hope you do not mind."

"No," she said. "Not at all."

Caroline Maddox, though not warm to Mirela, gave her approval in one brief, terse sentence to her son, but in front of both of them, "I will not see you unhappy any longer."

Later, Frederick had his own opinion. He and Lady Heather were eager friends of Mirela. "I was really expecting a riot. I am somewhat disappointed in Mother."

"She's softened with age."

"She's gone soft is what she's done." He raised his glass to Danny. "Cheers."

But the people who took most to Mirela were of course Brian and Nadezhda Maddox. Nadezhda also had black hair – though it was always covered – and slightly darker features. "I am from the Romanian lands, in Austria," she told Mirela. "You are Romani. So it runs in the family, these marriages."

"I will grant my approval on the condition that I get to wear my crown to the wedding," Brian said.

"Brian!"

"What? We have crowns and we never get to wear them, _Your Highness_."

Nadezhda rolled her eyes.

* * *

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Danny and Mirela Maddox were married in a private ceremony in one of the many churches of Cambridge. Danny did not have to go to London, as the Bishop of Cambridge was a good friend of Sir Daniel Maddox and granted his son the special license free of charge. When he learned the woman was a gypsy, he was less pleased, and made some comments about at least her entering the Christian faith. Not that she was not already Christian, and her family had been for centuries, but Dr. Maddox knew better than to correct a bishop unless he had to.

Beyond the Maddoxes, Emily and Henry Jordan, and Dr. and Mrs. Tell, the only guests who could make it on such short notice were a few of the Darcys and Mr. Bingley. Eliza Turner was in Confinement at Kirkland and Jane wished to stay with her, but sent her regards. Mr. and Mrs. Darcy came, and so did Geoffrey, Anne, Sarah, Cassandra, and Mr. Jameson. When inquired after Georgie's presence, Geoffrey mumbled something about her being under the weather, and it took some nudging and a hint from Elizabeth to learn she was with child and not feeling up to a cold journey. Caitlin stayed behind with her and the children, but Grégoire came, further confounding the bishop as to the odd assortment of people gathered in the chapel, two wearing jeweled crowns.

"It is the only time I'm taller than you," Brian said to his brother. The crown did add considerable height to him, just enough to clear Dr. Maddox's head.

Frederick stood up with his brother, and Danny Maddox pledged his vows with an odd ring in his hands, bejeweled and ancient. It was a gift from his aunt, part of her ancestral jewelry recovered after her father's death, and he thought the uniqueness suited the woman who, by the end of the vows, was Mrs. Daniel Maddox.

It was winter and there was no rice to throw that could be spared, so they threw breadcrumbs at the couple, retired to Chesterton for the wedding breakfast, and saw them off. Danny and Mirela would have Brian's house outside London for the next few weeks, to enjoy before they set about the task of finding their own.

* * *

A day and one very uneasy train ride later, Mr. and Mrs. Maddox arrived at his uncle's place, so small compared to Chesterton, and with a wing he could navigate without his sight, though he did not choose to do so. "Now I know why I did not marry," he said as he entered the guest bedchambers.

It was not what she was expecting to hear. "Why is that?"

"I could be horribly romantic and say I was waiting for you, which I will say." Danny kissed her properly, unlike the kisses they snuck the last week and a few times after the ceremony and on the train. "But the truth is, I could not bear this moment without my sight. You are too beautiful."

"I thought you assumed I was ugly, when we first met." She meant, when she offered to pay him and not with money, because she was desperate. "Did it matter to you, if a woman was ugly or not?"

"It depends on the definition of the word." He was a little nervous, it now being a while since he was with a woman, and never with a wife, and drank his wine instead of immediately retiring to the bed. By the fire, he held her hand, still scarred from the frostbite, but mostly recovered. "I did imagine you, and never ugly."

"And when you saw me?"

"My imagination proved inadequate. But you tortured me! I thought I had given up on my sight, and didn't care, but I kept thinking what you might look like. I had to ask someone, but he wasn't terribly descriptive, in Harrogate, in that seedy gambling den. I had to know." He finished his wine, and refilled her glass. She was nervous, too. He could tell from her grip. "What did you think of me?"

"When?"

"When you first saw me."

"I thought you were a maniac to have a bowl on your head."

He laughed. "Beyond that. When you really saw me."

She smiled. She'd done so little of it that it was wonderful to see. "I will be honest because you will love me all the same."

"Undoubtedly."

"I felt pity for you. I've seen bad scars before, but on men who got in fights, and who deserved it. You didn't look like you deserved it." She put down her wine glass and felt his face, where the scars began beside his eyes. "And yet you carried yourself with such dignity. I could not figure you out."

"And now?"

"I cannot figure out why you love me."

"For all the reasons you just said." He brought her hand down from his face and kissed it, which was followed by her wrist, and lower arm, upper arm, shoulder. "Because you loved me from the very first moment you saw me."

"I did. I love you, Daniel." The way she said his name was different, with her accent. It was special.

"I love you, Mirela," he said, trying to imitate her accent. She giggled, but he silenced her with a kiss.

They abandoned the wine and the fire, and made their own warmth in bed.

.... Next Chapter - The Promise Keeper


	43. The Promise Keeper

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 43 – The Promise-Keeper

Mr. Emerson and Sarah Darcy's courtship went smoothly enough that he returned to London in December to retrieve his mother's ring from the bank and say hello to his sister.

She was, as she always was, very encouraging. "If you love her, you must pursue her to the end."

"The end of what?"

"It's a turn of phrase, silly."

He invited her for the holidays, and they passed it in Derbyshire, possibly the last Christmas of many they would be alone together. If Sarah accepted his suit, her fifty thousand pounds would go a long way towards establishing Megan Emerson in a better position, even though it more rightfully belonged to himself, his wife, and the family he intended to create.

His sister returned to London after the holidays, and life returned to normal in Derbyshire for Thomas Emerson. His leg was healed, but he was told to be careful not to re-break it when traveling on snowy roads. Aside from his duties as Vicar, that kept him inside for most of January. In early February, Mrs. Darcy and Sarah Darcy paid call on his house to inform him he would be needed for a baptism. Eliza Turner, Sarah's cousin, had given birth to a girl, her second child, and they decided to wait until her full recovery for the ceremony, to be performed at the Lambton chapel. He paid a visit to Kirkland the next day to offer his congratulations and check on the infant, who appeared healthy, and likely to survive until her baptism. He was disappointed that Sarah was not there, as most of his thoughts focused on her and his inability to see her regularly during the heavy snow, but he did not stay long and returned to the parish house.

Thanks to the Darcys, he had a man to help him around the house. "I'm sorry, Mr. Emerson," his butler said, "but he demanded entrance and it is so cold outside – "

Sitting in the living room was Charles Bingley III. He rose when Emerson entered.

The Vicar nodded for the butler to leave them. "Mr. Bingley."

"Mr. Emerson." There was nothing kind about his voice. He was patient, though, enough for them to retreat to the library and shut the door before he spoke again. "I assure you that the only thing keeping me from strangling you is that I've never been very good at it."

He removed his coat. "I will consider myself strangled. Mr. Bingley – "

"I would not have called you a hypocrite for being a man of the cloth and a sodomite, because I understand the complexities of it. But to marry into _my_ family – "

"I told her."

"And I was going to tell Miss Emerson, if you gave me the chance!"

"Did you love her?"

Charles snarled but turned away. "Perhaps not. I don't know anymore." He poured himself a drink. "Did you tell Sarah you've reformed?"

"It was a phase, Mr. Bingley. It was part of my life at one time, but never the whole of it. Before I fell in with some friends, I was with women. I can understand your anger, but my feelings about your cousin are not false." He sat, not eager to continue the conversation, but understanding there was no way out if it.

"You brought Mr. Hyde into our home, too, and destroyed Cassandra. I've seen her – she's not well. Not the woman I used to know."

"I am sorry for that, truly I am."

"He was blackmailing you?"

"Yes. He knew exposure would mean the end of my career and I need the living to support my sister. And ... a future family." He watched Charles soften a little, or at least stop pacing. "I did not want to house him, but he said he was reformed from his ways, altogether different in nature from mine, and he was also in the ministry. I did not know he was involved with Miss Cassandra. I would have put a stop to it immediately." He wrung his hands. "I would like your blessing on this marriage."

"I came to stop it. And to help my sister with her child, of course."

"I wish you to review the facts and instead grant your blessing."

Charles laughed. "I did not know, as a cousin, my blessing was required."

"You must realize why I ask."

Charles nodded. It was out of respect. Emerson wanted his.

"I do admire your conviction," the Vicar said.

"Flattery will only get you so far."

"I will not apologize for telling my sister about you, if that is what you seek. I am not sorry for it. I am sorry her feelings were hurt and that yours were as well, but I think it worked out for the best, and I would do it again. She is my sister and my charge."

Charles swallowed his brandy, or whatever it was that was in the decanter. "She was my one chance for a family, a life in England. I did care for her."

"But you didn't love her."

"I don't know. Maybe I did. Could have. As you've come to love Sarah."

When in defense of his sister, he did not mince words. "Megan told me you were still seeing someone when you came to court her."

Now it was Charles' turn to flinch. "That is true."

"And you still are. Living with him."

"Yes. He got run out of town, and to avoid a scandal for my family, so did I. So now I am an exile, in and out like the wind, and my brother will inherit Kirkland."

"We both made our choices."

"Do really think I had any other choice to make? Do you think I eagerly abandoned my familial duties – "

"I do not know." He only knew of Charles, truly, and he was never spoken of as a hothead, but nonetheless he was, at that moment, because of the nature of the conversation. "I do not presume to know the hardships you have endured, Mr. Bingley, and will continue to endure. But what was once my person, who indulged his tastes with both men and women, who debased himself, is no longer. I am not proud of my past, when I experimented but should have used more judgment and caution. But it is the past now, and the only person who I have ever had feelings for without a physical experience of any kind is Miss Darcy. Can you not then see why I would pursue her?"

"I suppose I cannot blame you for that." Charles frowned. "If Sarah has accepted you knowing full well your background, I suppose I ought not interfere. You did not expose me when you could have."

"Clearly, I am not in the business of exposing people's faults. Sometimes, even when I should. But in your case, no, it was never in question. If you were to..." for lack of a better word, he used the word he hated, "...reform and devote yourself to any woman, my sister or another, wholly and truly, that was none of my business. Or if you chose the other route, not to abandon what you felt inside but knowing the disaster it would bring you, I could not judge you for it. In no other respects than to the safeguarding of my sister's feelings. I am all she has in the world, Mr. Bingley."

Charles looked away, putting down the empty glass. "If you marry Sarah it would substantially increase your fortune."

"Yes, though on my own, my living is sufficient."

"I do not assume you are a fortune hunter, though if you were, in that respect you could have worse luck." Charles smiled sadly. "It will aid your sister to marry Sarah."

"Yes. One of the very last of my reasons, but – "

" – a solid one, all the same." He nodded. "You understand that I had to be sure, about your commitment. I will not have Sarah's heart broken under my watch."

"Yes."

"Did you propose?"

"Not yet."

"Then I wish you luck, if it is meant to be. Sarah deserves a caring husband, and I at least know you are not derelict in your duties in that respect." He offered his hand, and they shook. "Though if you are derelict, I will find someone capable of strangling you. I think you know by now that I will not have to look far."

He smiled nervously. "I do. Thank you."

* * *

Eliza and Matthew Turner proudly presented their daughter, Jane Turner, in a fresh, newly-sewn white gown for her baptism. Her Aunt and Uncle Wickham, Aunt Wickham being Matthew's sister, stood as godparents in the private ceremony, though 'private' was a relative term with such a large family attending and taking up most of the chapel. Their son, Elliot, was held by his father, and consistently told to shush throughout the service, but was not removed.

Mr. Emerson waited until the celebrations were complete to ask for Sarah's hand. Caught up in emotion, she did not hesitate to say yes. Even Mr. Darcy, his would-be father-in-law, only gave him the mildest of critical eyes (and it was Mr. Emerson's experience that Darcy could give some very critical eyes, with or without a rifle) before granted his consent. He had to have expected it, with a long formal courtship, and did not require a long engagement. If anything, it would be sooner rather than later. Georgiana Darcy was expecting another child in the summer and upon receiving his congratulations the Vicar learned that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bingley, Junior, would be departing shortly after that for a trip to India. Their other son, the married one, had a wife who was also expecting, though she would not be returning to England and the child, if it survived, would be born in India. Yes, a spring wedding was best, but with enough time to make all the arrangements for a grand wedding. A Darcy daughter could only be married in style.

Charles Bingley III departed shortly after the birth of his niece, and Mr. Emerson did not hear from him again, though he was invited to the wedding. Life settled down a bit until the snows cleared, and the Darcy women could go to Town for the wedding preparations. With them gone, and the younger Mr. and Mrs. Darcy in Lancashire, that left Mr. Emerson to be called often to the Bingley house and spend time with Mr. Darcy. Though regarded as a somewhat stiff, old-fashioned man, he operated differently in the privacy of friends and family. While he did not appear overly eager to give his daughter away, he was not unkind to Mr. Emerson in any way, and was at least eager to know him better. Mr. Darcy had a great devotion to his daughters, and never minded showing it. He was especially kind to Cassandra, who was still clearly a wreck.

Sarah's French uncle, Mr. Bellamont, and his Irish wife, remained throughout the winter, visited occasionally by their spitfire son, who was studying at Cambridge to be a barrister. Through conversation, Mr. Emerson learned what he already suspected, that Grégoire Bellamont was a bastard son of Mr. Darcy's father, and that he had once been a monk. Mr. Emerson found his faith invigorating and his duties humbling, but Mr. Bellamont was of a different character entirely. He spoke as if everything came naturally to him. Despite being a devoted Catholic, and Darcy being a member of the Church of England, Mr. Darcy made it clear he held his brother in the highest esteem, and would have let him officiate the ceremony if Mr. Bellamont was a priest.

There were many arrangements to be made on Mr. Emerson's end. The curate Mr. Hammond would stand in for him during his long honeymoon, but after his return, would retire and they would have to open the position to someone new. Sarah, who had sworn off marriage and was a great reader, was now to be married and in the position of a Vicar's wife, so she had a window of opportunity to travel and see the sites of Europe she had read so often about, and he was happy to indulge, never having done so himself. The renovations on the house would be extensive, and it was easier to plan them now so they would occur while they were gone. This afforded him some hours with his betrothed, which he thoroughly enjoyed, however labor-intensive it was.

There was much to look forward to.

* * *

"_I, Thomas Emerson, take thee, Sarah Darcy, to my wedded Wife, to have and to hold – _"

"Damnit, Darcy, this is a wedding, not a funeral. I can understand the _women_ crying – "

"_ - from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health –_"

Darcy looked over his shoulder at Bingley. "I would appreciate you not cursing in my chapel. And you don't look so bright-eyed yourself."

"You started it!"

"_To love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my trot_h."

"Mama, what's a troth?" Alison asked.

"A promise."

"Then why doesn't he say _that?_"

"Hush."

_"I, Sarah Darcy, take thee, Thomas Emerson, to my wedded Husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse -"_

"Look at that! Even Georgie's crying."

"Charles, stop that," Jane told her husband when she was recovered enough to do so. "She's with child."

"I swear we're about to flood the place."

_" - for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth."_

"Eliza, look, I think Uncle Darcy's crying."

"Charles, stop it!" Eliza Turner looked to her husband, who was having trouble keeping a straight face. "What is it with you men today?"

"_With this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship, and with all my worldly Goods I thee endow: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen_."

Mr. Emerson placed the ring on Sarah Darcy's finger, and Mr. Hammond happily declared them husband and wife, to the great satisfaction of the room, who responded with a loud cheer that filled Pemberley's chapel.

* * *

After a long lunch and many well-wishers, the happy couple eagerly climbed in their carriage and departed for the train that would take them the rest of the way to Town, to rest before their journey. Though not eager to let them leave, each married couple knew the lovebirds wanted nothing more than to be gone, and after a few hours, they had to let them be.

It was still light out when the carriage was seen off, but the festivities continued well into the night, and guests dropped off one by one. Georgiana, already showing early in her condition, pushed her children to bed shortly before she retired, well ahead of her husband, who was busy getting soused with his cousins. Darcy, with his hosting duties, allowed himself only a single glass of wine that he nursed for most of the evening, seeing guests off until he was alone in the study, and contemplating his own retirement when Cassandra begged entrance, as if she'd done something bad. He hugged her.

"Aunt Bellamont invited me to Ireland. For a few weeks."

"All right."

"You don't want me to stay?"

Darcy released her. Her eyes were red. "You are not bound to stay here forever. Besides, it will likely be good for you."

"I don't want to leave you."

He forced himself to smile. "Under some circumstances, young ladies leave their fathers, and though we're always sad to see them go, we know they are the better for it." There was a throbbing pain in his chest when the carriage departed earlier, but it was bittersweet, or so he reminded himself. "We cannot hold on too much. It is not good for either party."

"You're trying to convince yourself."

"And you're like your mother – you know me too well." Now he really did smile. "Every day, you make me proud. You will find happiness. It is unavoidable, or so I imagine Sarah would tell you know, the determined old maid that she was."

"She said she would never be married."

"But I knew she would. And I dreaded it and was happy at the same time." He held her one last time. "You will be happy. I promise."

"Papa, you mustn't make promises you can't keep."

His answer was, "I never do."

.... Next Chapter - Monkey in India


	44. Monkey in India

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

Author's Note: This is the final chapter in section I of this story. There are three sections. The next one wraps up various plotlines that happen over a few decades, and the final one ends our series as definitively as possible. I appreciate you all for following me this far and hope you will continue to the end. The next section will begin next week within this story heading, so you don't have to change any settings if you have this story on chapter alert. It does pick up a few years from now and from the POV of a character we've only heard about in background stories to conclude Mugen's plotline, but bear with me and we'll be back in Pemberley shortly.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 44 - Monkey in India

Pemberley's peace and quiet did not last long. Cassandra's stay in Ireland was short, and on her heels came the younger Darcys as Georgiana entered confinement for the summer. Even without guests, Darcy and Elizabeth had their hands full with two of their children, their niece, three grandchildren, and one fully-grown and not-entirely obedient hound. Mala was fully trained, but seemed to have the same stubborn streak of her owners, picking and choosing when she decided to obey commands. Though generally reliable to follow commands, she showed the same eagerness to confound people who wanted to be confounded the least (namely, Darcy) that the rest of the family often displayed – to Elizabeth's amusement far more than Darcy's, and leaving Geoffrey and Alison to repeatedly apologize for her antics.

Some of the long hours were spent teaching Mala how to chase after game, something she had little chance to do in Lancashire, as Geoffrey was not as much a fan of traditional huntsmanship as his father and uncle. Still, retrieving a fowl was something any hound should know how to do, but she showed much more interest in returning with something to play fetch with than the thing she set out to find. Though Bingley was far more interested in indulging her, she always went inexplicably to Darcy, and his shooing only made her more insistent.

William Darcy, the second generational heir to Pemberley, was now old enough to be properly taught to fish and to at least watch his relatives hunt and ride. He could even read and write a little, even if it was just scribbling, and he could complain that he was not included in some of the activities Alison could partake in, not fully comprehending the age differences and privilege system.

Guests came and went in the heat of the late end of summer, though an increasingly exhausted Georgie had little patience for them, and was glad to see the return of Sarah Emerson (nee Darcy) to Derbyshire, as that at least cast attention away from her. Sarah was radiant, and Elizabeth looked to Cassandra in the hopes that she would see how people could be transformed into happiness. Though not constantly sad, Cassandra was not as outgoing and social as she used to be, and Caitlin wrote that it would take time, even years, before she was ready to contemplate marriage again. Darcy and Elizabeth, having just lost one daughter (even if she hadn't gone very far) were willing to wait.

To add to the Bingley's anticipation of their Indian trip, news arrived from Edmund, now living in a palace outside of Madras, that his wife had safely delivered a baby boy, who he assured them was eager to meet his grandparents.

"He didn't name him?" Georgie asked.

"Not in the letter."

Georgie just rolled her eyes and sunk deeper into her chair, and Jane smiled with sympathy. Georgie was late in her condition, and having trouble sleeping with what she judged to be the most energetic, excited, and annoying child yet constantly moving and kicking. She spent most of her day in her chambers, dozing off between meals for brief periods, only to be woken by movement. Geoffrey was as supportive as he always was, but he leaned on his mother, as the process was tiring for him as well, especially since Georgie no longer slept through the night, and if a child was born and lived, he could not expect many solid nights of rest in the near future. He could always sleep with his earpiece in, but Georgie's movements woke him, even when she tried to do otherwise.

A visit from Danny and Mirela Maddox proved a temporary distraction. Danny and his Uncle Brian were reopening the school now that Danny could serve as an instructor, and they wanted Georgie's advice on the curriculum. It gave her something to do other than worry about the baby for a few days. Danny and Mirela were often in London but did not live there, choosing instead to split there time between the Maddox house and Brian and Nadezhda's estate while they searched for a house outside of London to their taste, or could be made to their taste. Mirela did her best to put up with what was socially expected of her when she stayed at Kirkland or Pemberley, but Danny did not linger at either place beyond her patience. Like gypsies, they kept moving.

Jane and Elizabeth took charge and ordered the visitors, even relatives, to a minimum. By the end of the summer, Georgie was both due and exhausted, and it was beginning to show on her face and in her nerves. When the doctor prescribed she stay in bed, she cursed at him so steadily and moving through languages in rapid succession so that neither Jane nor Elizabeth could look him straight in the face for the remainder of the visit or several days later. Georgie was unrepentant, but walked very little anyway.

She suffered two more weeks of September before her labor pains began, which was a relief to the men of the house and immediately tiring to the women. Fortunately the child was quick in coming, followed in short order and to no great surprise by another, and only when the afterbirth was passed and Georgie completely done with her ordeal was Geoffrey introduced to his new son and daughter.

"Fuck you," she said to Geoffrey as he held his daughter. She was holding his son. She gestured to the babies with her head. "You're alright."

Geoffrey, despite himself, could only smile. Maybe it had something to do with holding a newborn, partially of his own creation, in his arms. "You are a steadfast advocate of motherhood."

"For all my complaining, yes." Her voice was so hoarse it was nearly indistinguishable, but it softened as she looked at her son, who had not yet opened his eyes. Like his sister, he had brown hair, but it was lighter and redder in color than his father's. "I would do it again. Again and again and again." She stroked his soft skin with her finger.

"Should I quote you on that?"

"No, next time you should try to knock some sense into me when I suggest it." She limply gestured, and they traded children. "I would do it again," she repeated, tears in her eyes. "Over and over. Until all of the lost souls of the world have been reborn."

Geoffrey did not comment, as his wife was fading, though even in sleep she clutched her youngest child. He called for the mid-wife to check again that everything was as it should be relieving her of the infant, placing his daughter in the crib beside her brother. "I never asked this much of you, you know," he said to Georgie, and it was probably best she couldn't hear him. "I do not know why you have rewarded me as such that you have."

Outside the door, his mother was waiting, but his daughter beat her to him. "Is Mama all right?"

"She will be. She's sleeping now. You have another brother and sister."

"Can I see them?" It was very late at night, and only she was awake.

"Yes, but very quietly. Your mother needs her rest." He looked to his own mother, who seemed to have the same sentiments for him. Alison saw both the babies, with only a few words passing between her and her father before she was ushered away, and Geoffrey collapsed on the bed beside his wife, most of his clothing still on and his body above the covers, and slept.

* * *

A week later, Colin and Heather Darcy were baptized in Pemberley's chapel. Their Uncle Emerson performed the service, and Frederick and Lady Heather Maddox were named godparents. It was during the celebration afterward, long after Georgie and the twins had retired to rest, that Sarah announced she was also expecting, hopefully sometime in the following spring. A mildly embarrassed but still proud Vicar Emerson accepted congratulations. Geoffrey shook his hand especially hard and kept his own opinions, which were more like warnings at this point, to himself. He retired early himself, not staying up with the other young fathers to celebrate, as he was much more interested in sleep. Though it would always be by Georgiana's side, it would occasionally be with an earplug and the occasional intrusion of a wet nurse.

Bingley and Jane stayed long enough to make sure their daughter recovered and the babies survived. Georgie's recovery took a month, and then the Bingleys closed up Kirkland and went to Town to stock up on supplies for the journey. In her letters, an exuberant Julia Bingley had a few requests for British goods, some particularly for the baby, and there was the small matter of items for themselves. The trip would be two months, less if they made good time. When their departure date approached, their children made a surprise trip to Town, Georgie and Geoffrey's first since the births, to say goodbye. Bingley joked that it was just an excuse for Georgie to hold Monkey in her arms again.

On their last night, they were visited by Darcy and Elizabeth, two final surprises. On the morning of their departure, they were seen off. Elizabeth hugged her sister while Darcy smirked and actually petted Monkey on the head, if so briefly it could hardly be seen. "Are you really intending to take him to India?"

"He is an _Indian_ monkey." Monkey sat rather quietly in the crook of Bingley's elbow, his favorite spot as of late. "And besides, I can't bear to leave him behind."

"But you can spare yourself of your children's company."

"My children can take care of themselves." He looked down at Monkey, who just looked back up at him in agreement.

* * *

As 1836 came to a close, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bingley II arrived in the port of Madras, otherwise known as Fort St. George, one of the major British centers of activity in India along the Eastern coast. The first familiar faces were managers for the company Bingley knew well and Jane had entertained at their house in London on several occasions, followed by a retinue of native servants and a few Sepoy guards. The home that was their immediate resting place was a stately Georgian-style white house. Tea and scones were served, and the manager assured them that Edmund was doing well at increasing the influence of the company without threatening the East India Company. He smoked a cigar, not a hookah as they made small talk before he left them to refresh themselves in their chambers. Bingley stepped onto the porch, where the air was fresher, and finally stripped himself of his wool coat and vest, to the shock of his servant. He ordered up some more cold drinks and a massive umbrella to set out on the porch to shade his wife. "I can't believe it. We might as well be in England."

Jane, in her sweet but very understanding way, said, "Is your sight at risk?"

"Twenty years ago there was none of this." He helped her unlace her bodice and they sat on the porch together. "All right, there was some. A few buildings, maybe, that I recognize." They had a full view of the skyline for busy British Madras. "And a lawn they had to water excessively. It was much too hot for it. But scones? Never."

"I still say it is the most unique skyline I have ever seen, no doubt to be quickly put to shame by others, but I have traveled little."

"You should have traveled more," Bingley said, and took her hand. "But I promise to make up for it."

* * *

As many sites as there were to see, the Bingleys did not dally in Madras proper for more than two days, long enough to recover from their journey before setting out on a new one. Bingley desperately wanted to ride the whole way on an elephant, and was severely disappointed to learn that was not a good way to travel for an Englishman if they wanted to make good time, and they took a carriage instead. Besides, he saw the look on his wife's face when the elephant passed and moaned, and decided maybe it was for the best.

It was nearly a day before they arrived at a small Mughal palace, made with bright _chunam_ (polished lime plaster) and topped with multiple-tiered domes, where a bright-eyed, excited and silk-robed Edmund and Julia stood under a yellow umbrella to greet them. "Mother. Father." He resisted from running to greet them and stayed with his wife, but accepted when Monkey squealed and leapt into his arms. "Monkey."

Julia appeared more nervous as she curtseyed in her _sari_. "Mr. Bingley. Mrs. Bingley."

"Welcome to our home."

"Edmund." Jane embraced her son first, then her daughter-in-law. "And what a beautiful home." There were no glass windows, just intricate wooden latticework.

"It was one of the palaces of the Raj, I believe. Obviously one of the minor ones," Edmund said, as if it was obvious. It certainly didn't look minor, making everything back in England uncomfortably cramped. Here, there was _space_.

They weren't as interested in space at the moment, and proceeded directly to the nursery, where the infant boy lay. Julia picked him up, cradling his head and its few whispers of strawberry-blond hair, and passed him to Jane. "This is Charles."

"His godfather would have been here for the baptism," Edmund explained, "but France is a long way from India."

"My back is still telling me that," Bingley said, semi-impatiently waiting his turn to hold not his newest, but one of his many grandchildren. "You've heard the good news about Georgie, I assume."

"And I assume her children are well."

"Twins," Julia added, "I can't imagine it."

"Geoffrey's probably never so glad he's half-deaf," Edmund said, and Bingley laughed. The infant Charles held his head up, and made indiscriminate noises, but not much else. He did offer his grandparents a toothless grin as they stepped out to enjoy the sunset.

Used to eating little and exhausted from their travels, the elder Bingleys accepted only a little curry and kebabs, and finally some arrack before they were shown their quarters. Bingley shed the last of his British clothing for _pyjamas_ and climbed into bed under the screen.

"You don't think I'm immodest?" his wife said as she reappeared from behind the screen, perfectly covered but now in free-flowing cotton robes.

"Of course. That and this is our bedchamber and I don't care. But I think you look beautiful." He was able to get those sentences out as she climbed in next to him. Even though it was a very wide bed, more than they were used to, the cramped ship meant they instinctively snuggled together. "A long way to come to see a grandchild."

"Yes."

Monkey climbed up on their bed, and neither had much energy to stop him. Eventually Bingley pushed him onto the dresser, where Monkey made a bed out of Bingley's discarded clothing.

"Definitely worth it."

"Yes."

* * *

As the senior Bingleys relaxed at last in their comfortable surroundings, sampled the local food (not all of which agreed with their English stomachs, but tasted wonderful), and enjoyed the elegance of the old Mughal way of life, one thing was obvious to them. Their son was deliriously happy with his new wife and son. Despite his obligations to the company, which were by no means small, the lifestyle of the culture provided him with time for his family, especially because unlike a lot of other Anglos who "went native" (which he did not entirely do – far from it – but far enough to be in the running) he did not take a second wife. He did know men who left English society to work for princes and kept harems or at least one or two _bibis_ on the side of their British wife, but he was far too entrenched in his values. Still, he said cautiously to his father, "Never underestimate the power of the harem of the man you're doing business with." The Muslim wives held quite a lot of sway over their husbands and their households, at times much more than an English wife, and some famous princes sent their wives into battle against French and English forces.

Julia was the only one who had been invited into a harem, of course. "I would not enjoy its politics," she said, but with a knowing roll of her eyes. "They do speak more freely than British women, or it sounded like they did. My Tamil is very bad."

"It was more the way they said it?" Jane asked.

"Yes."

Not that Jane had a chance to see a harem, or much of women in general. The Muslim ones were heavily veiled, the Hindoo ones, not as much. While she walked around mostly covered, albeit with thin weaves of cotton and silk, her husband spent a day in the market without so much as a hat, and earned himself a sunburn that kept him awake for two agonizing nights. From there on, Edmund insisted a man follow Bingley with a huge umbrella at all times. Edmund himself was already quite tanned and used to shielding himself and the infant Charles stayed indoors. Julia was busy with her son, not leaving him to an Indian nursemaid (some things only went so far), but before her son came along, they learned she traveled with Edmund on most of his business trips, which was how she saw the inside of harems, though the English families did not segregate the sexes, especially a new husband and wife. She understood a great deal of the local culture and more of the smatterings of local languages than she would admit because her natural modesty. In India, isolated from the past, Edmund and Julia formed the relationship they both needed in their lives.

After two weeks of bad sunburns, lessons in food tasting and recovery from their long journey at sea, Bingley grew less cautious and began to plan sightseeing. He got to ride his elephant, but not before learning it was best to have an umbrella ready in case the elephant decided to cool itself off with a nose spray, and after laughing herself silly, Jane joined her soaked husband and gave him a scarf to cover his face and recover his dignity.

They passed many stone temples, all magnificent but many abandoned. Their guide explained that these were Hindoo temples, and fallen into disuse when the Muslim population became dominant in the region. Jane thought the intricate carvings fascinating, then turned away when she got a closer look at one of them.

"So that's where he got it," Bingley said, his face also a bit red, and not from sunburn. "The man who wrote that book Darcy gave me. Carved right into the stone."

"They should cover it!"

"Why? It's only the act of love displayed graphically in the solid stone of a holy site." Which made her laugh, and able to recover. "The monkeys don't mind."

There were dozens of them – temple monkeys that lived in the ruins and ate from the local fauna. Bingley went to set Monkey down to join his brethren, albeit of a slightly different species, and Monkey responded by running right back up his outstretched arm and onto Bingley's shoulder, squealing at anything that came near. "Oh, I've taken you too long from your homeland. You don't even recognize it."

They returned to the harbor to sail north, as Bingley had the ambitious goal of showing his wife the Taj Mahal. It took a week to get there to see a single building, but upon seeing it, Jane admitted it was worth the travel.

"Emperor Shah Jahan built it in memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal," Bingley said. "A bit overdone for a tomb, but a touching tribute, don't you think?"

"Are you hinting at something? Don't even think of it!"

He had his arm around her shoulder. "I don't know of any English architects who are up to the task. Plus, how would we get the proper stone to Derbyshire?"

"I don't want to think of your death," she said, "or mine."

He kissed her. "Neither do I."

* * *

Before turning around, they went a bit further to see the Golden Temple, a Sikh shrine in Amritsar, where Bingley learned how to tie a turban properly so it would never come off unless he removed it. "You can't even tell my hair is white," he said, and Jane smiled, so he wore it the rest of the trip.

On the way back to land, they made a stop in the province of Bihar, which was close to the border of the Kingdom of Nepal. There they found a somewhat decrepit, decaying temple held up by the fact that it was a stone pyramid, and therefore immune to most ravages of time and neglect. There was a small Hindoo monastery there, and Bingley found a monk who spoke enough Urdu to understand him and guide them around the temple. On the Western side was the Bodhi Tree, the legendary tree under which Siddhartha Gautama sat and attained alignment to become the Buddha. It was a grand fig tree, much taller than anything else immediately around it, with prayer flags hanging from its branches, but otherwise unattended because the land was controlled by Hindoo, not Buddhist monks. Bingley plucked a leaf and a seed and carefully wrapped them before putting them in his bag, and Jane fed Monkey one of the figs.

They returned to the shore, admiring many other sites on the way, and sailed back to Madras, where a slightly anxious Edmund was eager to greet them. He had letters from home, nothing serious but many well-wishers. He tried to hide how much he had worried about their safety, but Julia admitted it later to Jane. "Every day I had to stop him from sending out sepoys after you, just in case."

Back in the Bingley palace outside Madras, there was more resting, and they needed it. Their journey was taking its toll, especially with all the walking and riding involved in the journey north. It was the journey of a lifetime, and it seemed to have taken a lifetime, because they spent the first few days mostly sleeping and eating and rereading their letters from home. While they were gone, Joseph Bennet married, and Elizabeth reported that while she did not know much about the bride, the normally serious Joseph had an almost silly, lovesick expression for the duration of the festivities. 'He reminded me so of Papa for a moment,' she wrote of the owner and future master of Longbourn. By the time he actually settled there, he would probably be a bishop and it would only be a summer residence, but that was still more than Mr. Bennet ever hoped for before Mary returned from studying in France by way of Brighton all those years ago.

Darcy's comments were brief: he wished them a safe journey home, anticipated their return, and their collective grandchildren were driving him crazy and it was all Bingley's fault as far as he was concerned.

_Our grandchildren have certain distinguishable traits that I shall not hesitate to identify as coming from not the Darcy or Bennet family – perhaps some of the Bennets, not our wives, but most properly the remaining suspect._

Darcy did not say how he came to this conclusion, so as to what event spurred him to write so earnestly, that was left to their imagination.

Geoffrey's words were brief as well, scribbled at the bottom of his wife's longer letter let to her mother.

_If you want to gift us something, bring home an excellent governess, or at the very least, another nurse._

But what they most enjoyed was Alison's letter, which was only a few words followed by a drawing of the family at Pemberley – Darcy and Elizabeth, Geoffrey and Georgie, Alison and her four siblings, and Mala. This they showed to Edmund and Julia, then Jane put it in her pocket, deciding her husband was more likely to stain all his clothing or lose it.

They made a few more outings, but they were mainly local. There was plenty to see and do and tire themselves out by doing so. They came home one day to find Monkey had finally left the house and gone far enough to climb a tree. When Bingley approached, he did not immediately leap to him, but climbed down the tree and began squealing incessantly. When Bingley tried to grab him, he scurried back around the tree.

"Father, let me," Edmund said, stepping in before he tripped. Monkey howled, and led him around the tree a few times, then finally up it again, and Edmund had to get a servant to climb up to get him. The servant called back down, and Edmund translated. "He says there's another monkey up there, and our monkey won't leave it."

"A female monkey? I didn't think he had it in him."

Edmund shouted back up, and the servant replied. Edmund translated. "It's a baby."

With instructions, the servant carried both down, and only then would Monkey return to his perch on Bingley's shoulder. Edmund cradled the tiny monkey, little more than an infant. His coat was a different shade than what Monkey's had been before it went grey, and he was shivering. "He's been abandoned. Look how thin he is."

"You know how I feel about monkey treatment," Bingley said, and they carried the baby monkey inside, where he was too scared to move much, and they fed him sweet water and finally some dried fruit before he curled up inside a box meant for keeping ink pots and went to sleep. There he remained until he regained his lost health, and began to make a mess of the place, wreaking havoc on the servants, who then had to be carefully lectured on how to properly respect their new guest. Still, the monkey did not leave, even though Monkey had paid him no further attention since they started caring for him.

They were in India four months before Jane began to openly talk about the family, and how the letters were not enough, and Bingley agreed. Edmund was not planning on staying more than a few years at most, so he would return and they would see Julia and their grandson Charles Bingley (the First) again. Edmund and Julia threw them a celebration of their long marriage before they left, and invited many company people who knew either Bingley or his son, or just anyone who would accept the invitation. They smoked the hookah and drank arrack late into the night.

In the morning – well, afternoon – both couples went to the nearest temple, the one with all the monkeys. Bingley walked to the edge of the jungle with Monkey and set him down. "There. Go play with your fellow monkey."

Monkey looked up at him, but Bingley just turned away. Monkey squealed and followed. "No! This is your home. Don't you understand that?"

"Charles," Jane said in her softest voice, "he is a monkey."

"So this should be basic in his understanding," Bingley said, his voice cracking as he shouted back at Monkey. "Go home!" And pointed to the jungle. "Go!"

Monkey did not make another sound, but leapt into his arms, a bigger leap than he had made in awhile. Bingley collapsed to his knees and held him, crying. "Alright. I understand." And he did not try and persuade him again, carrying him back to the house.

"See?" Edmund said to his mother. "He's a very smart monkey."

* * *

Before the departure of his parents, Edmund gave them a quickly-done portraiture of young Charles. "You will see him again soon enough, but this should tied the others over." He also had a second one, for the boy's godfather, uncle, and namesake in France. "I will be home soon."

"I look forward to it."

* * *

Bingley, Jane, Monkey, and the smaller, unnamed monkey they were not entirely sure would survive the journey boarded a ship at Port St. George and set sail in the spring of 1837. After the two-month journey, they were happy to see England again, even if the London they found was dressed in black, newly in mourning for their king. King William IV, brother of George IV and son of George III, had died on June 20th of heart failure. His daughter Sophia died in childbirth in April, and he was so affected that he never recovered, and quickly followed her. His niece, Queen Victoria, turned eighteen in May, and her coronation took place eight days after her uncle's death.

Sparing themselves the atmosphere of London, from which many people had already fled after the coronation just a few days before the Bingley's arrival, they proceeded immediately to Derbyshire. The first one to greet them at Pemberley was William Darcy, who ran out ahead. "Grandfather Bingley! Grandmother Bingley!" He waved his arms at their carriage as if they wouldn't hear him and notice him, which they did. He was not in black, and though the hound following him was, that was her natural coloring. Bingley climbed out first to extend a hand to Jane, and which point William looked up at him in his kurta and said, "Why are you wearing a dress?"

* * *

Whatever mourning customs being observed at Pemberley for their dead king were abandoned in open celebration of the Bingleys' return. Kirkland was opened with record speed, partially to house all the family that came to see them as if they were some spectacle. All of the infants they left behind were now at the very least almost toddlers, and some were walking, so much that Bingley felt a bit like a king presiding over, "a court of very small people." All of them wanted things from him, and he was happy to provide.

Jane was relieved (as was Bingley) that Georgiana was fully recovered and now that the twins were being weaned, or at least moved fully to a wet nurse, Georgie was free to return to the activities that made her Georgie – mainly, meditating and running around the woods like a madwoman. Her time was more limited with five children, but she had no shame in accepting the help of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and servants. She had finally learned to not put too much on herself, and she was the better for it.

They were not free from all mourning. Bingley constantly clutched Monkey to his breast because the animal was weakened, either by the trip or some unknown ailment, and had problems jumping around like he used to but expressed great displeasure at being left alone. For the first time he was permitted in the Bingley bed, and Jane stroked him to sleep. He had attention only for the younger monkey, still tiny but also still alive, and even that was limited. When asked about Monkey's supposed pilgrimage, Bingley shrugged his shoulders, but was otherwise silent. Despite the many people surrounding him, begging for his attention, his mind was elsewhere, tending to an increasingly feeble primate who had to be coaxed into eating and spent the whole day sleeping on someone's chest, usually Bingley's but sometimes Georgie's. He was unresponsive to the children's probing, and on an unusually chilly summer night, he was in such obvious pain that Bingley put brandy on his finger and let Monkey suck on it so that he had a little, and he finally slept. This time, he did not wake.

Monkey was given a small but dignified burial behind Kirkland, and a tombstone much larger than the creature that inhabited the tiny casket. There were no wailing women, but Bingley, Jane, Georgie, and Eliza did cry, however quietly, and went back into black for a little while, ostensibly for their king to the outside world, but to theirs, for their pet and friend.

"He wanted to die where he lived," Darcy said, a surprising amount of tribute as he put a hand on Bingley's shoulder. "Not far away, in India, though he surely appreciated the journey."

Though there was a baby monkey in the family, he could not replace Monkey, and Bingley felt a certain amount of guilt in doing so. Instead he gifted him to the one child Monkey had truly gotten along with – Brian Darcy. Perhaps it was because of Bingley's state of mourning, but for once, Darcy brokered no argument whatsoever about the entrance of another monkey into the house, even though it was his house. Brian was at a loss for what to name him, and his sister suggested _saru_, Japanese for the word monkey. Brian crinkled his nose but accepted the suggestion, as it was very close to 'Sorry', which was a word he had to use fairly often when explaining the behavior of his new pet.

"As long as we have a good hound and a good monkey in the family, we seem to be safe," Bingley said to Darcy, as they watched their grandchildren playing together, too many to list off, or so it seemed.

"So you say," grunted Darcy, "because they live in my house."

"Yes, so you must have all the luck."

Darcy looked at his wife and daughters chatting, and the children playing on the ground of the parlor, and said, "I suppose I do."

End of Section I

.... Next Chapter - The Quest


	45. Kundun

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

_**Huge notice:**_ The forums for my site have been "lost" by , my ISP, as has all the other information stored on laughingmanpublication's servers. is still up, but the forums are gone. Once this issue is resolved on the end - it takes them 48 hours to officially decide they can't find anything - I will try to get up a a most recent restore, which hopefully will be like "last summer" recent. YES, it will require a lot of people to re-register. NO, that is not cool. Words cannot encompass how pissed off I am right now.

Author's Note: The opening chapters of this section, which is about 15 chapters long, have a lot to do with the story Mugen told Georgie in Japan, so I think it would be helpful for me to do a review:

**Master Hyuu** was the abbot of a San Soo Monastery in southern China. He knew the secret of Dim Mak (death touch) but would only teach it to someone he considered to be the reincarnation of the abbot who taught him. He discovered a boy named **Hmang Shin** and trained him, but Hmang Shin was too young to learn and accidentally killed a fellow monk while training. In despair, Hmang Shin threw himself off a cliff. Master Hyuu prayed to the goddess **Kwan Yin** that he would devote his life to her if she would return Hmang Shin to him.

Fifteen years later, a young **Mugen** washed up on Chinese shores not far from the monastery after escaping prison by killing the samurai in charge of transporting him. Master Hyuu named him "Moo Shin" (his original name was Gen) and assumed he was Hmang Shin's reincarnation. He blamed Mugen's bad luck and angry personality on bad karma from committing suicide in his previous life. Much to the disappointment of the more loyal monks, Master Hyuu taught Mugen the secret of Dim Mak and told him that he was really from the Tibetan plains, where he had been a monk as a child but ran away to study martial arts in China. Mugen left the monastery shortly before Master Hyuu died.

As we learned later, Master Hyuu entrusted several people with his belongings as he lay dying. He gave **Bai** his rosary and **Kang** his statue of Kwan Yin and a tapestry. Bai went after Mugen to learn the secret of San Soo and Mugen killed him in self-defense. The rosary disappeared, to reappear in the Buddhist Temple where the Darcys were assigned to live in story 9. Georgiana identified the rosary as familiar and took it for herself; Mugen took this to be a sign that she was Master Hyuu's reincarnation and took her to the now-closed monastery on the Chinese mainland, where she found hidden compartments in Master Hyuu's old office. Kang was watching this, now a gardener near the monastery, and sought out Mugen. He gave Mugen the tapestry and the idol to give to Georgiana. Mugen initially refused, and eventually consented, but would not reveal her identity or location.

There was an additional student of Master Hyuu who has not yet been mentioned because Mugen doesn't know about him. This segment starts with him.

Historical Notation: There is not a lot of documentation for Tibet in this period because foreigners were banned from Lhasa and many other sections of Tibet for most of the 19th century. Tibet was nominally part of the Qing Empire, which by our time period was into troubled waters with the defeat in the Opium Wars, opening up Western China to Europeans for trade for the first time.

The next chapter will be far less footnote-heavy.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Section II

Chapter 1 - Kundun

1845

When Lobsang Tsering first saw the holy city of Lhasa, he collapsed on the ground not in reverence, but exhaustion. It took considerable effort to rise again and bow the traditional two more times. His maroon robes were already so soiled from the dusty road – and in many places, open planes of the high plateau – that there was little he could brush off and still look presentable.

Perhaps because he was old, and not just a monk, his Kashag guide offered him a hand to steady himself. "Lama, there is still some ways to go, but you can see the road." The path was well-trodden and clear, and in the distance, it was impossible to lose sight of the Potala Palace, built into the mountain stone above the city.

Lobsang understood. It was time to part with his guide Alim and his men, so gracious to bring him this far. To guide an old monk from the northern plateau was one thing, to enter the holy city another. He would have to ride alone the rest of the way, his camel laden with all his sacred objects and treasures, but he would probably find and hire help before the bandits spotted him. "Thank you." He offered a white scarf along with the final payment owned to the Kashag guide, paid in old Chinese coin. There were some more jingling in the camel's pack, but they were ornamental. The real wealth Lobsang had sewn into his robes before leaving his monastery in Amdo. "Many blessings."

"Goodbye, Lama Lobsang Tsering."

"Goodbye, Alim."

His camel readied, he paid a final tribute to the pile of rocks inscribed with the sacred _Om mani padme hum_ prayer by placing a small rock on the pile, then climbed on his camel and continued his journey alone. An old monk, his goatee small but completely white, his movements labored, was a sitting duck for thieves and bandits until he reached the gates, and then a different sort of them once he was inside. His political enemies, he could fight.

He was not a few minutes along the road when he came upon a mendicant, prostrating himself as he approached Lhasa. "Holiness."

"I will bless you," he said, "if you accompany me to Lhasa."

"I cannot interrupt my path."

"I am an old man and this is a tired camel. I will go slowly enough if you promise to defend me."

The mendicant agreed, and continued his prostrations, with Lobsang following a step behind. It was not the speed he would have preferred but the mendicant was a layman and a young man, and he could be of some service to him, perhaps. Stopping only briefly for butter tea, they kept enough of a pace to reach the outskirts of the city by nightfall, where Lobsang put his hand on the mendicant's head and blessed him, and they parted. The mendicant would be largely ignored, but Lobsang had to continue to the gates and the monastic authorities, where he unsaddled and bowed to them. "I have come to beg an audience with Kundun," literally meaning the Presence of the Living Buddha, the 11th Dalai Lama. In reality he would, if given any attention, have his actual business with the Regent. The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel was only seven years old.

"Where are you from?"

"Kumbum." [1] He produced the letter from his abbot, touched it to his forehead, and handed it to the guard, a monk who padded his robes to appear as though he had otherworldly muscles.

The guard briefly broke the seal and briefly skimmed the letter in the candlelight provided for him, as it was now dark. "You are not on pilgrimage."

"That is not my main intention, no."

"Your request will be reviewed by the ministers." He bowed his head slightly as he opened the doors. "Please come inside."

2389 years after the life of the Buddha, Lobsang Tsering, formerly Kin Xinhai of the Quan Yem Monastery, arrived in Lhasa on what he judged to be the most important task of his life.

* * *

Once settled in the residency areas beside the Jokhang Temple, Lobsang did not lose time. He slept two days from his journey and started his search. His request to meet with Kundun [2], or at least his Regent, would not be met anytime soon unless he did something. He had not played politics in a very long time, but it still came naturally to him.

The new Regent, Reting Rinpoché [3], was not yet fully established in his authority after the overthrow and exile, and finally murder of Tsemonling Rinpoché for being too close to the Chinese Emperor. Reting, named after the Reting Monastery where he studied, was not without his Chinese friends. It was too important to have them, regardless of the consequences.

Lobsang's grasp of the Lhasa dialect of Tibetan was poor, but he still spoke many dialects of Chinese, including his native Cantonese. The Kumbum monastery where he had now spent half his life was not far from the border with China, which meant silk road traders, and he earned his place in the monastery in the early days by being an interpreter for the abbot. With all of his faculties, he could speak to the Chinese _ambans_ (ministers) and it was not a few weeks before he had met all of them and their extended families at least once, and was friendly with a few.

The _ambans_ [4] did much hemming and hawing and Lobsang patiently sat through it. The British had violated the Middle Kingdom, doping it with its own opium until it opened its ports like a needy whore. Their conquest of India was also nearing completion, and perhaps Nepal was next. How long before they came to Tibet? A long time, he suggested politely, because the terrain was so rugged and the white men were so frail. The mountains would conquer the British, not the other way around. This seemed to calm their wailing over the fate of the Middle Kingdom for at least a little while, and they liked his soothing voice. He drank tea with them and ate some of the finest food since he'd taken his vows at Kumbum – dried and salted yak, sweet cream, even raisons and biscuits.

Not that he was to be distracted. It took Lobsang a month to find someone close enough to Reting to consider pushing the Regent for a meeting. When he first met Reting, Regent to the Dalai Lama and ostensibly the most powerful man in Tibet, it was very informally, at a noble's home near the summer palace. Reting's vest was embroidered, his overcoat yellow silk, but he carried himself as if the holy clothing meant nothing to him and other matters were weighing him down. He was young and unsure of his position, with the previous Regent dispatched so easily by the abbots. They greeted each other and talked pleasantries for a little while. Reting asked him about life at the Kumbum Monastery, so far to the north, and Lobsang made comparisons to Lhasa until the Regent was satisfied, and they could get down to business.

The business was a small chest Lobsang had with him, filled with old Chinese coins. For nearly forty years he'd been the sole protector of this treasury, and he was not about to give it over in one bribe. The price they settled on left him with enough money for the rest of his mission.

"And what if you fail?" Reting asked.

"I cannot fail," was his steadfast reply.

* * *

The Potala Palace, the seat of the Dalai Lama's kingdom, was a tall whitewashed building on a mountain slope, warning trespassers away just with its intimidating staircases. Built by the Great Fifth Dalai Lama in 1645, it was the ultimate site of pilgrimage, at least to look at it from a distance.

Lobsang was not the only one climbing the stairs. Elder monks, advisors, abbots, ambans, Tibetan nobles, Kashag representatives – everyone came to sit and pay tribute to the Regent, whether they respected him or not. The temple sweepers instructed him not to interfere, and wait in the very back row. At least the tea was good.

They rose as Regent Reting, wearing the yellow hat of his regency, entered and ascended the throne. Then they sat, and drank butter tea, and argued. Lobsang did not understand the dialect when it was shouted or mumbled, so he was lost, and if not for the noise, would have begun to doze. After the second hour he succeeded, only to be woken by the noise to his right. His hand went instinctively to his vest, where his money was sewn in, then he reminded himself where he was and looked. Little hands of a young monk poked in through the wooden latticework, painted red, until the watchman shooed him away and he went running down the hall.

As the meeting drew to a close, a monk dressed in the robes of a temple official approached Lobsang. "Lama Lobsang Tsering. Kundun will see you now."

He bowed his head to the departing man he realized was the Lord Chamberlain. A servant offered to carry Lobsang's bag and little case, but he would not let go of the artifacts inside to save his life and carried them himself. As they ascended to the inner chambers, where there was no light at all except from altar candles (and there were many of them), he did set down his bag to kowtow three times before the yellow throne that was taller than he was. On the yellow silk cushion sat the little monk caught peeking in on the council meeting.

Reting entered hastily and removed his hat in the presence of the Dalai Lama. He could bow much more quickly than Lobsang, who took a seat diagonal to the throne, not directly facing the Living Buddha. "Kundun, this is Lama Lobsang Tsering, from the Kumbum Monastery."

Khedrup Gyatso, the eleventh Dalai Lama and a boy who had not yet lost all his baby teeth, nodded serenely. With so many visitors, he probably had to be very patient. Lobsang handed the Lord Chamberlain his letter, who broke the seal as the Regent took a seat. He held up the wide paper, with both Chinese and Tibetan stamps, for the Dalai Lama to see as he read it. "This is an authorization form for an official search for the reincarnation of Lama Yongten Rinpoché. [5] It is dated very long ago."

"How long?" the Dalai Lama asked.

"More that forty years, Kundun." The Lord Chamberlain turned back to Lobsang. "If you would."

"Yes. Thank you." He bowed. "I was born in China, where I was a student of Yongten. He was from Amdo, but he had taken a Chinese name, Hyuu. He was abbot of my monastery, and before he died, he asked me to locate his reincarnation." He went more into depth, the words not coming so easily to him now, at least not in the Lhasa dialect. His hands were shaking as he drew one last letter, this one in Chinese script, and finished his story. "After many years of failed searching, I received this letter from another monk, who still lives near our temple. He writes here that he met the other student, Moo Shin, and his student, a girl he does not know the name of. Moo Shin was instructed only to teach the secret doctrines of San Soo to Hyuu's reincarnation." The Regent took the letter from him, but it was in Cantonese, so he could not read it. He handed it back to Lobsang, who continued, "Moo Shin knows where she lives. When my teacher died, all the birds that had been perched on the roof flew northwest, against the wind. We assumed that meant he would return to Amdo, but Kang says, the girl is from Britain."

The Regent, very familiar with the situation in China, looked alarmed. The Dalai Lama, clearly not so versed, only asked, "Where is Britain?"

"I don't know, Kundun. I have been told it is Northwest."

"It is," the Regent said. "Very far away, beyond India and Nepal. They have to come by ship, the British. They are very pale and they have never heard the Dharma. [6]"

While the Dalai Lama pondered this concept, Lobsang was more worried about the Regent trying to block him. "Kundun, I am almost at the end of my life. If I die, my promise to my master will go unfulfilled and he will never be found. If he is in Britain, I beg your permission to go to Britain."

"It is very far," Regent Reting said. "And we have no monks who speak British."

"Oracle!"

"Holiness – "

"The Oracle!" the Dalai Lama shouted, his voice very insistent. "We will consult the Oracle. That is an order."

He held no temporal power, but he said it in a voice that would not be denied, and they bowed their heads.

* * *

Even though it was cold outside, the hundreds of candles and the incense burning, combined with the heat of the bodies of hundreds of monks gathered together made the room quite warm to Lobsang. He was given new robes and embroidered vest, and the Dalai Lama sat on his thrown in his ceremonial yellow as the Nechung Oracle entered, walking with crutches to hold him up in his seventy pounds of jeweled armor. So named because of his monastery in Nechung, the Oracle was an ordinary monk until he went into trance, and three monks came to put his headdress on, weighing additional pounds. The normally quiet man dropped his crutches and began to seethe, his face lit up with all the anger of the demon Dorje Drakden. He grabbed his sword and hissed, staggering back and forth, followed by his dozens of attendant monks to try to control his flailing actions. Despite being armed, he struck no one, and no one thought that he would.

He hissed and approached the Dalai Lama's throne, not always looking directly at him, tapping the mirror breastplate through which he could see the future. Lobsang couldn't make out what he was saying, it all being in a special tongue, but there were monks standing by to record everything he said.

"Fools! Scum!" the Lord Chamberlain translated for the Dalai Lama. "You line your pockets. You debase the Dharma."

The Oracle tapped on his future-telling mirror, swinging his head so laboriously from side to side that it looked like it might snap off. Lobsang was afraid, and the constant clashing of cymbals did nothing to alleviate this.

"The Emperor is weak. He will fall. He has poisoned his kingdom," another monk, closer to the flailing oracle now, translated. He was likely referring to the Chinese Emperor and the war over opium. The Nechung Oracle, when he was not channeling a protective demon, was perfectly politically informed. "There is blood on your hands. All of you. Sera blood. You are poisoned with blood. Help from the West. Ten. Three. Thirteen."

The Oracle pushed the monks guiding him aside and looked at Lobsang, his face so hideous in its contortion that Lobsang nearly lost his footing. The Oracle spun back to the Dalai Lama and tapped insistently on his breastplate. "You will see it – green fields, five towers, square ocean. Find the Second Yinje Lama. Fools ... to lose ... the first one!"

The Oracle took the tea cup from the stand and offered it up to the Dalai Lama, who drank. Then he backed away, tossing sand as he went, and finally collapsed. His monks removed his headdress before he choked on it and lifted him on their shoulders to carry him off as they would a dead man, though the Oracle was still very much alive.

The Regent turned to Lobsang. "You have your permission, or you will. There is one last thing you require."

* * *

The Deprung Monastery was not far from Lhasa proper. In fact, the Potala site was chosen because it was well situated to be close to the Yellow Hat monastery. Thousands of young monks, most in their teens, studied through fierce arguments for their _geshe_ exams.

One particular monk, in his early twenties, was behind on his work and he knew it. He clapped his hands but no question came forth from his mouth to match it. "Damnit!"

The debater sitting on the floor in front of him laughed. "You will never pass if you don't learn how to ask questions."

It was a sting Lama Dorje was used to, but that didn't help his frustration. Since his return to Lhasa, his monastic career was stalled by his impatience with the tedious study system. He was too used to traveling.

Dorje excused himself to walk under the shade of the tree and sit for a minute, where a lay official approached him. "Lama Dorje?"

"Yes, that's me."

"You are Dorje, the son of Thupten Jampel?"

"Yes." He was one of ten sons of the noble, and the third to be gifted to a monastery as a child.

"You have a summons."

"To the Jokhang Temple?"

"To the Potala."

Not that he could refuse, but why all those stairs? It was unlikely he would meet with anyone important enough to justify it. "Of course. Thank you."

They left immediately. It was a few miles to the Potala on horseback, and he busied himself by guessing all of the possible reasons for the summons, probably all having to do with China. The council was not in session, but that did not prevent ministers and abbots from coming and going. Beggars held their thumbs up and their tongues out to greet him as they swarmed him, and he smiled but said, "I don't have any money. Sorry. So sorry."

He avoided the pilgrims making their slow way around the building and up the long staircases. He could not imagine doing it every day, but many people much older than him did. There were hundreds of rooms in the Potala, and he did not know the dark one he was brought into. He bowed to Regent Reting Rinpoché on his throne. To his side was an old monk with a white goatee. "Rinpoché."

"This is Lama Dorje, Rinpoché."

The Regent nodded and the attendant left. Dorje took a seat and tea was served. Reting drank before they could. "I am told you speak British."

"I do, Holiness, a little bit."

"How much is a little?"

"I would say, not fluently, but I can understand quite a bit, and my master says I am a fast learner."

"You were in Beijing for that reason, no?"

He smiled. He saw no reason not to be pleasant. "I was in Beijing to pray for the Emperor, but my master assigned me to watch the British. This was five years ago. I had to leave because of the hostilities. The British are a people who cannot differentiate and treated us all like dogs."

"Is it true they conquered India?"

"Yes, Holiness."

"How?"

"They have guns, Holiness. Powerful guns, much better than the rifles of the Chinese traders. They have thousands of them. And also, they sell opium, but they do not take it themselves. That is how they beat the Chinese. It is like tobacco but it makes you sleepy."

The Regent nodded. "Your presence is required on a mission to find a _tulku_ who has been reborn in Britain."

If Dorje had had his cup in his hand, he would have dropped it, and it would have shattered. "Holiness, my British is not that good."

"It will have to do. Lama Lobsang, who is in charge of finding the _tulku_ of his master, cannot speak British." He put a letter to his head, and then passed it to a servant, to pass it to Dorje. "The Oracle has provided some wisdom, but you will need to travel to the islands beyond the Chinese border to find the man who knows where the _tulku_ is. From there, it is easier to get a ship to take you to Britain. I would send you with attendants, but considering the position we are, situated between two conquered nations, I cannot do anything that would arouse suspicion. If anyone asks, reply with anything that will suffice – Chinese, Mongol, whatever you wish." He waved. "Go now to Kundun, and receive his blessing."

The attendant opened a side door for them, and the old monk Lobsang rose, and Dorje bowed to the Regent and followed him. He had never seen the Dalai Lama, only his caravan when he traveled to his summer palace, and then only once. When Dorje left for Beijing, the 10th Dalai Lama had died and the 11th was not yet located.

The Buddha of Compassion was waiting to receive them with his Lord Chamberlain and his attendants. He had some enthusiasm in their task and smiled as they kowtowed to him. He put a scarf over Dorje's shoulders and bowed his head so their foreheads touched. "I see a safe journey. I see a safe return." He repeated the same with old Lobsang. "I see a safe journey." He hesitated. "I see a safe return."

They left his presence and were given provisions for their journey. Lobsang showed Dorje his master's old items, which he had carried for forty years as he went from place to place, searching for a suitable candidate. "Kundun hesitated because he knows I will die when I return. I am only staying alive to see this task through."

"That may be a long time." They could converse more easily in Chinese, because Lobsang did not speak Lhasa's dialect well, but they both spoke many dialects of Chinese. "I think Britain is many months away. They do not come and go easily."

Lobsang, for the first time, smiled at him. "I have waited years. I can wait a few months."

* * *

Footnotes

[1] Kumbum is a monastery in Amdo, in the very north of Tibet (and the modern province of Qinghai).

[2] Khedrup Gyatso, the 11th Dalai Lama, lived from 1838 to 1856. Alternate names for the Dalai Lama include: Kundun ("the Presence"), His Holiness, the Buddha of Compassion, and the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel.

[3] Dalai Lamas 8-12 all died young, either before they ascended the throne or shortly after. This meant a long period of Regency and political instability for most of the 19th century. Early in the life of the 11th Dalai Lama, there was a fight and the previous Regent was removed from his post and poisoned. There are conflicting reports of the name of the second Regent. I chose Reting as it had slightly more sources backing it up. A later incarnation of Reting would be the first Regent for the 14th Dalai Lama, who was also ousted for corruption and died in prison.

[4] Tibet at this time was officially part of the Qing empire, but mostly enjoyed self-rule because of its geographical obscurity and abject poverty. Unlike other provinces, it did not pay tributes to the Emperor in Beijing. Wealthy Chinese traders moved to Lhasa, where their wealth would go farther and provide them with a great deal of political power in the corrupt system, more than they would have had back in China. In return for supporting large monasteries, they were ennobled by the local ruling parties. Some were officials sent from Beijing, but most were civilian traders with tremendous economic influence in Lhasa.

[5] "Rinpoche" means "precious" and is added to the name of someone recognized to be a tulku, or reincarnate of a previous important lama. The fact that the title is already attached to Yongten/Master Hyuu's name indicates that he was already recognized as a reincarnation of someone important in his lifetime, though that person is not specified here.

[6] The Dharma is the teachings of the Buddha.


	46. Old Friends and Old Foes

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

_**Huge notice:**_ The forums have been restored. Yay! There will be a small delay on the next chapter - hopefully it will be up early next week - due to the holiday rush.

Historical Notation: Thank you to Gwen for pointing out that 1845 is set between Opium Wars, so the reference should be made to the Opium _War_, not the Opium _Wars_. Chinese history during this period isn't my strong suit so I appreciate all the help I can get.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 2 - Old Friends and Old Foes

It took three months to cross the Tibetan plateau and then the length of China. Lama Lobsang and Lama Dorje did have attendants for the Chinese length of the journey, and they proved indispensable in navigating the countryside. Through a combination of camels, horses, and boats they kept a steady pace. They saw no one of authority except local tribal leaders and minor king officials for most of the journey. Most people paid them reverence instead of ordering them around.

Only when they came within a week's journey of Shanghai did Lobsang see, for the first time in his life, a white man. Even as a boy in Beijing, their presence was still largely forbidden. The man was exceedingly tall, but thin and pale, and he wondered how such a creature could stand in the sun and not wilt, much less defeat the Imperial Army. The man had a rifle, and he spoke in a very fast and yet poorly pronounced Mandarin, too difficult for Lobsang, but Dorje conversed with him quite well. After a brief discussion, the man waved them on. Dorje slowed his horse so Lobsang could catch up.

"He wanted to know where we were from, where we were going, why we had so many attendants. But he knew we were monks."

"Do they revere monks?"

"No, but they know who they are, and they can't tell the difference between Tibetan and Chinese."

"What authority did he have?"

"I don't know. I didn't understand it."

They had rifles in their party too, not as good but much more, and they had horses. Why did they stop for one white man and why did he speak down to them so obviously? Dorje laughed. "If you had conquered an empire older than the Buddha, you would think very highly of yourself."

"The Manchus are not conquered."

"They have made so many concessions that their position is in peril. They will need the next emperor to be much stronger, the next British king to be much weaker."

As they approached Shanghai, there were more foreigners, and quite a number of bandits, but they held them off. The two monks released all but one attendant before entering Shanghai proper, and found lodging in a monastery. The abbot was very clear: stay away from the Westerners. Their quarters were closed to the Chinese, even the highest officials. From the high windows they could see the odd wooden buildings going up in the distance, and the hundreds of ships, large and small, in the harbor. And Dorje, who was in Beijing at the start of the war, said this was nothing. Lobsang could only pray.

His coins were very old, and they changed them over to new silver and copper ones, paid and dismissed their final attendant, and hired a guide to take them south along the coast. It was the first trip on the open sea for both of them, even if the tiny boat hugged the shoreline. Dorje helped row, but Lobsang buried himself in his robe to shield himself from the hot sun and tried to stay calm.

"Here!" he shouted, and their guide called the ship to a halt. There was only a little dock, for tiny fishing boats. "Here! I remember it."

To Dorje it must have looked like just another wooden dock. "Are you sure, Lama Lobsang?"

"I remember, I used to greet officials and take them to the monastery. They would come from the Forbidden City and the boat stopped here."

Their guide, and captain, was not pleased. "If I drop you here, you must find your own way to Canton. It is not far, but I must continue on. I cannot wait for you to transact your business here."

Lobsang understood perfectly and offered up more coin in the ever-decreasing load sewn into his vest, and the captain abruptly changed his mind and gave them three days. Despite the heat, which he was no longer used to, Lobsang insisted on taking everything with him but his very outer robe. At least he had Dorje to help him shoulder the pack of ritual items.

"You can walk it," he said as they stepped onto the dock. "I remember."

Dorje removed his shoulder robe and wrapped it around his waist. "If you insist, Lama Lobsang." He put the pack on his head to shield his eyes from the sun, but Lobsang basked in it. He was home again.

This was not his home, of course. He remembered his early years in Beijing, before he was sent to be a monk, but he came to the Quan Yem monastery at a very early age, maybe ten, and it was most of what he remembered, staying there for many years and leaving immediately after Master Hyuu's death for Tibet. His robes were too thick for the weather, and he was sweating and dizzy, but he kept walking until he saw the monastery in the distance, and kowtowed as if it was Lhasa.

Getting up was not as easy. Dorje offered a hand and helped him up from the ground. He leaned on a tree to steady himself before he could continue.

"There are walking sticks in our bag."

"They are not mine to use," he said. "This way."

The shrubbery along the old path was a bit overgrown, and the town below much smaller than he remembered, with almost no one around and many of the buildings deserted. After the monks left, so did the commerce. "My Master was the last abbot. It was an Imperial decree. Political reasons."

At the steps leading up to the monastery was the old wooden gate, locked shut with a chain that was rusted through but still thick enough to prevent his entrance. "It is forbidden." He could still read the sign. He sat down at the entrance, which was at least in the shade. "Now we wait."

Lobsang saw that the weeds were all pulled, at least the ones that would be medicinal. Someone was here recently. In fact, he was not kept waiting for long as an old man with a white queue came walking down the road, pulling up wild plants as he went and putting them into his bag. He stopped at the sight of them, and they looked at each other for a long moment.

"Kin Xinhai."

"Kang."

The Cantonese words came flowing back to him in his old accent as he bowed to Kang, who did the same. Kang was not a monk anymore, but he could still act like one. "I did not know if anyone would be there, to receive the letter." Several monks left for the monastery in Tibet after Hyuu's death, but that was forty years ago.

"I was the only one."

"He said you would be the one to find him."

He introduced Dorje and they followed him to his little hut, on the edge of the town that still had people in it, some ways from the monastery. "I know you have traveled very far." All he had for them was tea and rice gruel, but they were happy to accept. "If you stay the night, maybe tomorrow, I will have a little meat."

"Our ship will wait." It was too hot to do much of anything else, and it made their robes itchy.

They chatted a little, but Dorje did not speak Cantonese and Kang did not speak anything else, so he ate and then retired to meditate, leaving the two old friends alone.

"He speaks British," Lobsang explained. "A little bit."

Kang poured more tea, but it was really more like water at this point. It was still very refreshing. "It took me many years to find Moo Shin after he came here. He was here a few hours, with a translator from Canton and his student. They went up to the monastery, came back down, and left. I didn't let them see me. I was afraid." Neither of them had gotten along very well with Moo Shin. No one had. "I was very jealous of him."

"I knew I wasn't good enough to be Master Hyuu's successor, so it was easier for me." He remembered Kang was younger, about Moo Shin's age. "I was very honored to be given my task, but I should have listened to him when he said it would be frustrating!"

"It has been a long time."

"Britain is a far way to go. Do you have any doubts?"

"I know that Moo Shin has none, and he knows her best. I spoke to him, when I found him in his island home, but he would not tell me where she was, or who she was. He wouldn't say her name. He would do anything to protect her." He still had his rosary, and his fingers thumbed the beads without him thinking about it. "What will you do?"

"I have papers from the Dalai Lama authorizing the search for Master Hyuu's reincarnation and the establishment of a lineage."

"Who?"

"The head of my order," he said. "And we have an Oracle that gave us signs to find the way."

"And you have a monk who speaks British."

"Yes."

"You will have to go to Canton, and get a ship to take you to the Ryukyu Islands. The Uchina people live there, mostly Japanese, but they trade with the British and the Chinese and whoever else comes their way. I had to search many islands before I found him, but I will write the name down for you."

"You don't wish to come?"

He laughed. "I was not meant to go to Britain. How could I? I have never left this village except to go to some nearby islands. I have seen Master Hyuu again once and that is enough. It may not be worth much from an herbalist, but I will pray for your success."

"I will pray for you, Kang, for a joyous rebirth."

"If possible, I would like not to be an herbalist again. My hands are so sore."

They laughed together, and continued to reminisce into the night.

* * *

It was a bittersweet departure from the village. They had achieved their goal, but Lobsang had to resist the urge to stay just a little while longer, break the chains that held the gates together, and see it one last time. But no, he had a job to do, and the time was very limited. He blessed Kang and they departed, to return to the ship.

The ship took them to the port at Canton, where there were a great number of Westerners, many of whom traded with the Uchina [1] islanders. Dorje, with all the energy of a young, inquisitive monk, needed only a day to procure a ride that would take them through the islands, with a stop at the one they wanted.

"The traders will not speak English well," the white man said to him. "You will need someone who speaks Japanese."

"Yes. Thank you." Those were the words Dorje was best at pronouncing.

They did not find someone who both spoke Japanese and was willing to go to the islands, so they had to leave without a translator and hope for the best. It was not a long journey to the first land, but further out at sea than either of them had ever been, so that there were stretches where neither could see land on either side of the ship. It was terrifying and beautiful at the same time.

"We are suspended in an ocean," Dorje said. "The Ocean of Dharma. Look!"

Off the port bow, a giant creature emerged from the sea, spouting water from its insides and spraying it into the air behind him as he moaned. "Dragon?" Dorje said.

"Whale," the sailor beside him said. "A whale. Big fish."

"_Whale_," Dorje repeated. "_Big fish_. Yes. Thank you."

When they reached the first major island, they set about finding a translator. Most of the local traders spoke a mix of Japanese, their local dialect, Chinese, or British languages like English and Dutch. Though Dorje and Lobsang were recognized and honored as monks, no one would go with them to the island with the name Kang had given them. It was a small island, inconsequential, but hostile to Chinese and Chinese-sympathizers.

At the third island, there was at least a Buddhist temple, more of a watering hole for traveling monks, and there they found one who spoke to them in fairly clear Chinese. He was Japanese, with black robes and a purple sash over his shoulder instead of their maroon ones, but he was a monk, and he was used to traveling. "The only thing I require is food." He was also a bit portly, and moved slowly, walking with his noise-making staff. "Isagi," he said his name was. "From Nagasaki, you know?"

"No, sorry."

"That's fine. Is there food? There's none here."

They returned to the boat, which was preparing to set out again.

"Three monks," Dorje said. "An auspicious number."

Lobsang, more focused at the task at hand, mumbled that he agreed.

* * *

After a month at sea, they found a small ship, owned by the British but heavily guarded by Chinese mercenaries, which would take them to the correct island. The British wanted to trade for whale oil and the local people were happy for the trade.

"I am looking for a man," Lobsang said to the headman, and Isagi translated into Japanese. "His name is Moo Shin. He is native, has blue tattoos on his arms." He made a gesture to indicate rings around his wrist.

The headman exchanged glances with the woman dressed as a local priestess. "Gendai."

"That is his name," Isagi explained in Chinese. "Gendai." He spoke to them a little more. "They will show us the way."

It was warm on the island, but there was a strong sea breeze, so Lobsang did not have to shed his upper robe. The villager assigned to lead them kept a fast pace, but for once, he didn't mind. They progressed up the hill and the villager stopped, and pointed up the only path. In the distance, there was a solitary house, and some gardens growing around it, almost on the edge of the island's cliff.

"I will go," Lobsang announced. "If he won't see me, he won't see anyone."

Dorje and Isagi stayed a few steps behind as he took the slow walk up the hill, to the field beyond the cleared trees. He stopped, and bowed. "Moo Shin."

Moo Shin was so much as he remembered him – tall, lanky, and shabbily dressed. He wore his hair wild instead of a neat islander knot, and most of it was gray instead of black. He sat on the porch, his feet over the edge. On one side of him was a well-polished sword of distinct Chinese make. On the other was a jug of something, not tea from his reddened eyes. "I knew you would come for me. You've always come for me," he said in the same Chinese Lobsang had grown up with. "Did Kang send you?"

"He told me where you were." He kept his shoulders bowed. "You don't remember me."

"I don't remember every old Chinese."

"I am Kin Xinhai. Master Hyuu – "

"You were his secretary," Moo Shin said, his eyes widening a little with the recognition. It was a fair assumption at the position Lobsang filled. "He trusted you."

"He did."

"He liked you."

Lobsang smiled, embarrassed. "Perhaps." He set his bag on the ground, removed the wooden box, unlocked it with the key from around his neck, and produced a sealed message. "He said to give this to you."

Moo Shin rose, taking his sword with him, and crossed the grass to meet him. Lobsang touched the letter to his head and gave it to Moo Shin, who said, "I can't read Chinese."

"You will have to open it and I will have to read it to you."

Moo Shin broke the seal and unfolded the parchment, but there was no letter, only the figure of a man, with the ki lines traced along them in ink. Whatever it meant to Moo Shin, it made him smile at least. He turned the parchment over and pointed to the corner. "What does this symbol mean?"

Lobsang had to squint to read it. "Those are the characters for Kwan Yin." Sensing he had an opening, he handed the letter back. "Has anyone told you what occurred after you fled the monastery?"

"Bai tried to kill me, and Kang tried to blackmail me with guilt. Isn't that enough?"

"He said you would be obstinate. I thought maybe the years had softened you."

Moo Shin folded the paper and put it in his kimono. "Master Hyuu was a better judge of my character than you." But he listened, as in hushed tone, Lobsang told him of the three days Master Hyuu survived beyond his successor's disappearance, and the subsequent flight of the students, particularly Lobsang, and his journey to Amdo. Moo Shin looked skeptical, but he always did, or so Lobsang remembered. But he did listen, and then he turned away and paced along the edges of his little vegetable garden.

"I cannot do this. I promised Master Hyuu so many things."

Lobsang answered, "So did I. So we are at crossroads."

Moo Shin bit his lip. "I will go with you to England, and to Pemberley."

"_Pemberley_?"

"Yes. It is -"

The shot was painfully loud, and Lobsang instinctively ducked into a position that made his body ache. Dorje came running, to pick him up, but he shouted, "No! Moo Shin!"

Moo Shin laid on the ground behind him, having falling flat on his back. He sat up quickly, one hand grasping the growing dark spot on his chest, just below his shoulder. It must have missed the heart, because he was still alive, and strong enough to stagger to his feet. He cursed in Japanese. "Sa! That hurt, fucker."

The advancing Chinese rifleman, formerly hidden in the brush, took his time to reload as he walked. Isagi swung his staff but the trained, armored soldier easily deflected it and shoved him aside.

Moo Shin balanced himself on his wooden geta, and dropped his sword. He advanced on his attacker. "Let me show you how a real warrior fights!" Before the rifleman could finish his work or stop long enough to draw his own blade, Moo Shin drew a dagger from behind and cried out as he stabbed him, striking right in the break in the lining between the plates of armor. He left the dagger in and retreated, away from him and them, as the soldier fell down dead.

"Moo Shin!"

"I won't let you have her," he said, taking up his sword again, but he could not draw it. He needed his hands to hold his wound together. "I will protect her from anyone, especially you."

Moo Shin waved his blade in their direction one final time, then stepped backwards, off the cliff.

* * *

The entire island's population seemed to converge on the rocky shoreline below, trying to navigate the shallow waters without ruining the hulls of the their fishing boats, but they found no sign of Moo Shin – not a body, not even a scrap of clothing. There was nowhere for him to swim, no island close enough, especially with his serious wound. Nonetheless he had vanished.

The headman took his burliest men and stormed the ship, where an angry but thorough investigation revealed that one of the soldiers had been a last-minute replacement to their normal retinue before they departed, a man they did not know but had all the right papers and dress. The deeply apologetic English captain, fearing for his life now, admitted to not being used to looking too closely at the mercenaries he hired to protect him, and begged to pay any expenses for the burial of their islander, when he was found.

But he wasn't found. The sun went down and came back up in the morning and they ended their search. The priestess went through Moo Shin's house. She did not speak any Chinese, but Isagi translated her words. "He always walked between worlds, Lord Gen. It is not a safe thing to do."

"Does he have relatives? Family?"

"He raised a boy whose mother fled here and died. Akihito was his name. He left a few years ago to train on the mainland. Also he wrote to the West very often. He always had mail."

"I must go to his student, the one in the West," Lobsang explained through Isagi. "May I take some of his things to prove myself?"

She nodded. "You may."

He did not intend to plunder Moo Shin's home, but it had things that were valuable to him. There was a wooden frame on the wall, and a painting in it of white men, and a woman with red hair holding a child. "What's this?"

"I don't know. He was not talkative."

He took it and some odds-and-ends from the storage room, things that looked used.

"Lama Lobsang," Dorje said, holding up a brass frame with the most splendid and ugly picture of Moo Shin he had ever seen. It was realistic, it was almost like looking at him, only it was in shades of gray. "What is this?"

The priestess explained to them, "Photo grab."

"Photo grab?"

"A trader came one day, a Westerner, and said he was doing research. He paid us to sit in front of a box for several minutes and said it would draw pictures for us. Gen paid him to have his picture taken. He wanted it sent to the West. A year later, the man returned, with the photo grab, but I guess Gen had no time to send it."

"I will take it to the West," Lobsang said and Isagi translated. "Will you have a ceremony if you do not find the body?"

"Yes."

As eager as the captain was to leave, they stayed the next day for the ceremony, conducted in the massive tomb area of the island, resembling a Chinese style of burial. In the absence of anything from Moo Shin's physical form, they laid a set of clothing in the box and set it inside the cave. From there they went back up the mountain, and set fire to his house.

"Normally we would not do this," the priestess said, "but Moo Shin was not an ordinary man. We respect him, but we cannot allow his presence to linger here."

"I don't think it will," Lobsang said, and held his hands up in a gesture of blessing as he watched the house burn.

... Next Chapter - To Relieve All Suffering

* * *

Footnotes

[1] An indigenous group in the Japanese islands near Okinawa.


	47. To Relieve All Suffering

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

_**Huge notice:**_ The forums have been restored. Yay! There will be a small delay on the next chapter - hopefully it will be up early next week - due to the holiday rush.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 3 - To Relieve All Suffering

"Whale?" Lama Dorje said, pointing at the creature coming up out of the water alongside the boat, as if taunting it to chase.

The sailor shook his head, but smiled. He must have been impressed. "Dolphin."

"Dowl-fin."

"Dolphin."

"_Dolphin_. Fish?"

"Like fish, yes."

"Dolphin. Like fish. Yes, thank you." He bowed, and got out of the sailor's way. As much as Dorje wanted to watch the creature a little longer, he did not want to interrupt any of the doings of the sailors, who controlled the monstrous wooden ship that controlled their destiny. Only it could lead them out into the vast water and bring them to the faraway island of Britain.

The sun was impossibly hot, but at least there was air to breathe. Below deck, where Lobsang and Isagi huddled in fear and sickness, the air was stale, almost unbreathable. He served them their remaining butter tea with care. "Lama Lobsang, you must drink."

"No more," the old monk said. "Please, no more."

"Even I don't want to think about food!" Isagi said, a very indicative statement. Isagi prayed and ate, preferably not in that order. That he even vowed to follow them on this journey as penance for leading a fellow Japanese into a trap was unexpected, and perhaps based on the promise of new and exotic food. That was before he was on the ship – the big ship in Canton that would take them to England.

It was a supply ship, not equipped for passengers, but the only one that would take them. The foreigners would not take Chinese as guests, even if two of them technically weren't Chinese. It made no difference to the white men, though the captain treated them all amiably enough when he was paid in advance.

It was a porter who spoke to them freely, specifically Dorje. He was willing to talk to him in the little English Dorje had. They were probably the same age, and he had red hair. His skin was so white that he was in the sun all day and yet had only the lightest of tans. He had spots all over his face, red ones.

"Freckles," he said.

"You are from Britain."

"Ireland."

"_Ireland?_"

"It is in Britain."

"Pemberley?"

"I'm sorry; I don't know what that is."

"It place. Place." He gestured to the ground, hoping that would mean something.

"Country? There's no such country."

"I not know. Place. _Pemberley_. In Britain."

The porter had a lot of patience, and they had a lot of time. Dorje was very rarely ill, only during the worst storms. He helped out on the deck. He wanted to listen to English, though his friend Neil said not everyone was speaking English.

"French. Dutch. Other languages."

"Not British?"

"No. Not English." Neil passed him the rope to keep feeding it along. "You are going an awful long way for a country you don't know anything about."

Dorje asked him to repeat it, and he did. Dorje smiled. "Thank you. Long way ... yes. Long way. Long journey to Pemberley."

"Why?"

"Message," he said. He wasn't supposed to tell the Westerners about the reincarnation of Lama Yongten. "Message to give."

"About trade? Are you involved in trade?" He added, "Money?"

"Oh. No. No trade. Only message I have."

"It must be very important."

"What?"

"A very important message."

"_A very important message_." He understood the words, but he had trouble pronouncing them. "Yes, thank you."

The sailors didn't like the sounds of their chanting. It was too low, too loud, and too odd. To make them happy, they muttered instead, and kept mainly to themselves. When they were in sight of land again, Dorje dragged Lobsang to the deck to see it. "Look."

"What is this place? Britain?"

"They say it is India."

"India? Is it close?"

"I don't know, Lama Lobsang." He didn't want to be honest at that moment, but he was anyway. "They say it's still a ways yet."

Lobsang groaned and nearly toppled over, but he survived. He did not get sick, beyond what the rocking of the boat was already doing to him. When the boat stopped at the next port, he got off long enough to bow down and taste dirt in his mouth. "Are we in Britain yet?"

"Sorry, no." It pained Dorje to tell him. "Capetown."

"Capetown? Where is that?"

"On the way to Britain. I don't know, Lama Lobsang."

They had to get back on the ship. The sooner they did, the sooner it would be over. The food was very plain, but unusual. They could not make out what the food they were served was, but they ate it anyway. Isagi seemed mildly disappointed.

The weather changed, from hot to cold and cold to hot. Neil helped Dorje, even though it only made him feel further despair. "Africa."

The next coast Dorje saw, he pointed to. "Africa?"

"Yes. Still."

"_Still_. Yes, thank you."

The ship, it was explained to him, was following the shoreline, going further north than he had ever been after going further south than he had ever been. He tried to tell the other monks, but it was too overwhelming. He did not know the world was so large. "Africa?" he pointed.

"Portugal."

"Por-chu-kal."

"Portugal."

"Not Africa, anymore?"

"No. We've passed Africa." Neil was more than happy to show him a map. "I'm a cartographer."

"A what?"

"Someone who makes maps. I drew this one on a previous journey. Or some of it." He pointed to a land mass. "This is China." He pointed to a much larger one to the left. "This is Africa."

"India? Where?"

Neil showed him a little spot where the ink dipped in the drawing. Dorje knew Tibet was between China and India, but not much else. He didn't ask further questions about Tibet, and he felt the worse for it. He wasn't being honest with Neil, about how important this journey was, how sacred. And Neil was being so honest with him. "Where Britain?"

"Where is Britain."

"Where _is_ Britain. Where is Britain? Yes, thank you."

Neil put his forefinger on the little island at the top of the map.

"It is so small!"

"You expected it to be bigger?"

Dorje laughed. "They fought China, won."

"Opium and guns. The key to everything."

"Key?"

"To open a door. To unlock something. To make anything possible. The center." He shook his head. "I don't know how to describe it. I am sorry."

"Not sorry. Thank you."

What he was beginning to understand was how far this journey really was. It was only a few months, less than it took them to travel from Lhasa to the far edges of China, and they had crossed the world. The ship had taken them across the world, almost around it. The next morning he sat in awe of the countryside in the distance, the green fields far away in the mist, and he knew he was a long way from home.

"This is France," Neil said, without being asked. "England is next. Britain."

"Yes?" He wrapped his robe tighter around him against the morning mist and the chill it brought. "Britain? Serious?"

"I think your companions will be happy to be off this boat. How long will you stay in Britain?"

"I do not know. We must find ... "

"Pemberley."

"Yes."

"It's probably a county or something. I don't know them all. Maybe Scotland."

"What?"

"Nothing, just thinking. I wish I could help you, Dorje. You're going to be very lost."

"We will find the way."

"Is that what your master told you? Lobsank?"

"Lobsang. He is not my teacher, but he could be. He is much wiser. Has been on this journey long time. All his life."

"I don't understand."

Dorje looked back to the coast, then to Neil. It was the hair, maybe, that made him say it. "Long time ago, his lama died. Lama Yongten, First Yinje Lama, left and went to Britain."

"Before he died, he went to Britain?"

"After he died. He was born again, the same person again, different body, in Britain. We have letter for him – from him. From First Yinje Lama to Second Yinje Lama." He put his hand on his closely-tonsured head. "His hair – red."

"It was?"

"It is now."

Neil smiled. "I don't understand you."

"You don't believe in the Buddha."

"Your god. I've heard of him, of course."

"All the suffering people of the world die, and are born again. Only with the Buddha's teachings can we escape. But some die, and are born again to teach again. Bodhisattvas. They sacrifice heaven to ease suffering of all. To relieve all suffering."

"Our L-rd, Christ in Heaven, died and was resurrected three days later."

"Yes, it is similar then." He smiled and nodded. "It is like search for small Christ."

"Blasphemy. Don't say that around other people, you'll get yourself in trouble."

"Tell no one."

Neil laughed. "I don't understand, but I won't tell."

"Yes. Thank you."

"Besides," Neil lamented, "who would believe me?"

* * *

"Lama Lobsang! Isagi-sensei! Come quickly!"

It was not what Lobsang wanted to hear. Isagi rose faster, and Dorje was there to help him up. He was not dressed. "What is it? Are we being attacked? By a fish? By an island?"

"You will want to see it," the younger, sometimes infuriatingly enthusiastic monk said, and dragged them to the deck. It was still dark, but getting lighter, and the sky was a shade of blue, too dark yet for real light to penetrate. There was a mist, and they followed Dorje's instructions to bring their sleep-filled eyes to a light in the distance. It seemed to disappear and reappear, like a ghost. "There. Britain."

"That's it?" Isagi said, and Dorje laughed.

"Lighthouse."

"_Lighthouse?_"

"Light on the shore, so the ships can see in darkness. The light is in Britain. We are almost there."

After so long in darkness, Lobsang could see the light in the distance. It was such a relief of suffering. He put his hands together "_Om mani padme hum._"

The light beckoned them, leading them on.

* * *

Britain – London – was not anything like Shanghai or Canton, even where the foreigners lived. The sky was different, the smells were different, the people were not foreigners – _they_ were, the three monks, and they knew it. And it terrified them.

They could not pretend to be Chinese – they didn't look the part – but it didn't seem to matter to these Westerners, who regarded them on the street with the same passing curiosity, like looking at a strange animal.

The streets were made of small stones, aligned to make it somewhat flat. Horses, tamer than even a child's pony, went up and down them and it made an unnatural sound. The world was so bizarre and yet colorless and cheerless. The people were cleaner, whiter, paler, and sadder. There were no brightly-colored temple walls, no white stupas with gold tops and colored prayer flags to color the very air around them.

Neil guided them to a building, just part of a row of them. "This is the East Asia Company. Maybe they can help you. I don't know."

"Thank you, Neil." Dorje removed one of his precious white scarves and put it over his head. "I will see you again perhaps."

"Be born in Britain maybe." He smiled and left them. Lobsang and Isagi did not understand the English conversation, so Dorje did not have to explain himself as he bounded up the stone steps to the wooden door. At least the materials were familiar. Wood and stone.

The man at the desk inside, where it was lit by lamps, was not Asian despite the name. He was a Westerner, but the Chinese serving him tea had a long queue. Maybe he thought of going home, and hadn't cut it yet. Or didn't want to. "May I help you?"

"Please," Dorje said. This was _his_ mission – to get Lobsang where he needed to go with his own language skills. He would not fail at it. "We go to Pemberley."

"Pemberley?"

"Yes. Place. It has five towers."

"A castle?" The man with ridiculously wide facial hair leaned back in his chair, amused. "Who are you?"

"We come from China, to deliver a message from Moo Shin to Pemberley. Do you know it? We pay."

"Really?"

"Yes, please." He bowed, without putting his hands together, like a Westerner.

The man was intrigued by his expression. "Pemberley Castle. I've never heard of it. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, of course." He took the tea from the servant but did not thank him. Seeing the others, the servant put down his tray and kowtowed to the monks.

"Will this man help us?" Lobsang asked in Chinese.

"He has a book of places, very heavy. I will get it!" He touched his head to the floor again and was up and off before they could say anything else.

The Westerner shook his head. "You have a very commanding presence. I've never seen Lin run off like that. Monks, I assume?" He gestured to his hair, meaning their tonsures. "I've been to Hong Kong – devilishly hard language to learn, Chinese."

"Yes, thank you."

The servant – Lin – returned with the book. "What's this?" his Western master said. "My address book? Oh yes – I suppose it would be here. Must be something you've said to him. Now, can you say the name again?"

"Pemberley."

"Pemberley. It is familiar ... a bit." He looked through his British notes, and they waited. "Ah – I thought so. An estate in the north. Not a castle, but very old. In Derbyshire."

"_Darbysher_."

"_Derbyshire_. Where is this?"

"A day at most, if you take the train."

Had Dorje had any idea of what that was, he would not have been so pleased.

* * *

All of the calm passengers aboard the train did not make them any less terrified of the gigantic metal monster they were riding. They knew, were assured, that it was not real, that it moved on the power of metal and man. This itself was not completely comforting. Man was a failing animal, and the train shook so horribly it seemed as though it would burst apart at any moment.

Dorje looked to Lobsang, who was pale. Isagi merely looked ill. "Lama Lobsang."

Lobsang clutched his rosary so hard as to test the strength of the cord that held the mala beads together. "I think ... Master Hyuu has asked a lot of me. Buddha the Protector, see us through this madness."

Dorje prayed and looked to his left, where a small child with yellow hair looked up at him, more interested in him than the wild ride they were on. The child was not afraid – why was he? He was not a child. Dorje smiled at the boy, who smiled back before his mother pulled him away.

A few hours but a lifetime later, three shaky monks touched down on the ground outside the station with a new appreciation for it. Dorje had instructions from the man at the company building, translated through Lin. He found a carriage and inquired. "Hello. Yes, we go to Pemberley."

The hairy, obscenely tall man (made worse by his high hat) turned around and looked at the three of them in disbelief – not to what they said, but to what he was seeing. "Who the hell are you?"

"Go to Pemberley. Pay." He held up the English coins. "Two crown."

"Pounds. Two pounds."

Here Lin's instructions had been clear. Dorje didn't know English money well enough to bargain without them. "Three crown."

"Five."

He looked at his hand. He did have that much of the coin called c_rown_. "Five. To Pemberley."

"Fine."

"Derbyshire, yes?"

"Yes, it's in Derbyshire. I know it. A few hours' ride."

Dorje wished he knew how long an hour was. "Yes, of course, thank you." He turned to his companions. "Lama Lobsang, Isagi-sensei, we must ride this to Pemberley."

"How do we know it will take us there? That he won't cheat us?" Isagi said, clutching his shajuko.

"We don't."

"You are very reassuring," Lobsang said, in a better mood now that they were off the train. He was weakened by the journey; only the hope that it was near its end kept him going. "Let us go see where this man takes us."

There were two men manning the carriage who tossed their baggage above in a disrespectful manner. Lobsang clung tightly to his own bag and brought it into the carriage instead. The inside was cushioned, and the ride smooth in comparison.

"How long did he say we would ride?"

"A few hours."

"How long is that?"

"I don't know."

"Does he have food?" Isagi asked.

"That's all you ever think about," Dorje said.

"It's food! It's a good thing to think about."

Exhausted from the tension of riding the train, Dorje closed his eyes. When he opened them, the taste in his mouth told him he had actually succeeded in falling asleep. Not surprising, since he had once done so sitting up on a horse, but on a horse, he felt in control. They were lost in a mysterious land.

Isagi was also sleeping – and snoring. Dorje looked across from him, at Lobsang. The old lama was watching the passing scenery with a look of transfixion. "Green fields."

Dorje looked out. The fields were so impossibly green, and full of animals grazing. Only in China had he seen such places, but there were no flooded landings or rice paddies here. "Yes."

"The Oracle said it." Lobsang had a light on his face that had not been there before. "Look!" His finger pressed against the window.

Dorje turned to see out that direction, at the building in the distance. It was square, and made of stone, but not painted white like the buildings he knew, and its roof was not red or black or any other suitable color.

"Towers! How many do you see?"

He squinted. "Four." The building had four corners and there were four small poles with banners on each tower. Maybe it is the wrong place.

"Stop the cart!"

"I can't – "

Lobsang swung the door open. "Stop!" he yelled in Tibetan. "Stop the cart!"

The carriage did stop, and Lobsang climbed out before Dorje could say anything. He followed. They were in walking distance now. The smaller fields had receded, and there were no other small houses, only the massive building and the road leading up to it.

Lobsang freed his arm from under his robe and lifted it. "Five!"

Along the road there were some things – trees, the lawn, a well. And to the side, a wooden pagoda with a pole and a flag of the same color. A fifth tower.

"This is Pemberley?" Dorje asked the confused driver.

"It is. Do you want to walk the rest of the way?"

Though not sure if he could get Lobsang back in the carriage, he would still have to unload their things. "No, please. Take us to Pemberley."

Lobsang kowtowed to the building. Dorje smiled to the driver and helped him back up, and into the carriage again. The older monk could barely sit still for the remainder of their journey, over a small bridge and up the road to the house on the hill. "Square ocean!" he shouted.

Dorje and Isagi looked out. They passed on their approach a long rectangular reflecting pool. Dorje and Isagi said a prayer, each in their own language, as the carriage came to a stop. Lobsang was the first out, the other two hurrying to follow him. "Here," Dorje could barely manage to say in his excitement, pointing to the ground. "Here is Pemberley."

"Do you need a ride back to the train?"

"No. No train." He could not conceive of another train ride anytime soon, be it Pemberley or not. The driver threw the bags over and departed. Dorje bowed to the white-haired man who approached him. "Pemberley, please."

When he got closer, Dorje could tell the man speaking to him was wearing a wig, with his real hair showing a bit beneath it. He was dressed in very fine embroidered silk. "May I help you, sir?"

"Come from China. Japan." Dorje looked to Lobsang, who had already removed the odd picture of Moo Shin under glass and gave it over so he could present it to the guard. "Moo Shin sent us."

"You're here to see Mr. Darcy?"

"Moo Shin sent us. His student. We have letter. Please."

"Yes. Thank you."

In the early summer of 1846, three monks – Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese – had come to Pemberley.

* * *

The halls were massive, the ceiling impossibly high without the usual supporting beams. How did the roof stay up? But that was not the first question on their mind. They were made to wait and they did, just inside the door, until the servant returned. "Mr. Darcy will see you shortly. In the meantime, you can wait in the Orient room. I believe you will find it to your tastes."

"Yes, thank you." Dorje gave him a wide smile. He did not really understand half of that, but they followed anyway, past many doors that were tall enough for monsters to walk through.

The servant knew which one to open, and held it so they could enter. "Please, sirs."

They bowed to him and entered. He gestured for them to sit on the couch, and another servant appeared with tea. It was awful – mostly water and without any butter at all – but they gratefully accepted and broke their fast on the little biscuits, so light and fluffy and delicious.

The room was filled with precious items and junk from many lands. They could recognize from their view from the couch many items – a Ming vase, a tea set good enough for a geisha house, a set of jade lions. None of them went together or were properly arranged, but it was still comforting.

The servant set another plate down and left as silently as he had come, closing the door behind him.

"Two birds!"

"What?" Isagi could not understand him, as he had spoken in Tibetan.

"Two birds," Lobsang repeated in Chinese. He stood, but he was shaking. Dorje took his arm to see that after all this way, he didn't fall, but Lobsang strode forward. "On his deathbed, Master Hyuu told me I would see two black crows in his home." His withered hand could barely lift to the tapestry.

It was hanging on the back of the door, so that it was only visible when the door was closed. Isagi did not recognize it, but Dorje did. It was a tapestry of the demon Mahakala, swinging her fiery sword. Above her were two black birds.

Lobsang fell to his knees. He was crying. Dorje couldn't stop him; he put his own hands together in prayer. Only then was the image taken from them, and the door opened, revealing a Westerner. He did not have a wig, but brown hair, and very wide sideburns. He looked down at the crying monk, then up at Dorje.

"Who are you and what is this about?"

... Next Chapter - Four Monks


	48. The Four Monks

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 4 - The Four Monks

"Mr. Darcy," the butler said, bowing again as an apology for interrupting the meeting. "There are three Orientals here to see you."

Fitzwilliam Darcy had spent seven decades in this mortal coil, with any number of bizarre circumstances and intruders no matter how strenuously he sought to avoid them. Instead of leaping up – something that would cost his back immediately and probably later as well – he remained firmly planted in his seat and said calmly, "Are there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Requesting to see _me_?"

His butler was new to the position, and eager to please. Delivering bad or confusing news was not pleasing and the poor man had trouble with his words. "They did not make a specific request. They said they have a message from someone. I couldn't understand his name."

Darcy's glance passed slowly by his solicitor and across the table to his son in a meticulous manner that very much defined his intentions. He did not speak a word.

His son rose. "I'll handle it."

Darcy could not help but smile, if just a little. "Of course you will."

* * *

Geoffrey Darcy gave the butler directions as to how to direct the monks, then took stock of the situation. His mother was at Kirkland with Aunt Bingley. His father would likely stay in the study until everything had been sorted out, for days if necessary. And Georgie was busy.

That was good. He wanted Georgie to be busy, even if the message was for her. She had been so unsettled by Mugen's hastily-scribbled letter about the three monks that she was dangerously close to her habit of acting on impulse, and that impulse might be to bash some Buddhist monk's head in. Geoffrey could only wish Mugen had been more prolific in his literary missives.

_Three monks are coming. Wait_.

Georgie read it to him, and he spent the rest of the night reassuring her that whatever it was, they would handle it together. That was, after he saw to the matter first this time. Maybe.

He was sure that he did not have long before Georgie discovered the news, however occupied she currently was. He had very little time. He was about to storm in the direction of the Oriental room when he felt a tug on his trousers. "Not now."

Helena simply raised her arms in expectation. His youngest daughter had an almost incorrigible knack for mixing her reluctance to speak with her adorable begging expressions. "You'll be the end of me," he said, hoisting her so they were eye level and kissing her on the cheek. "And I assure you, many have tried. I fear you will succeed."

"Papa," she said. She did speak, if rarely. The nurse detected no lack of intelligence, and assured them that this child was just choosy about her words and a little shy, like Brian had been. Georgie took the news in stride.

"Now I am sure you have a nurse somewhere who has lost her wits looking for you, and perhaps we shall have a bit of luck and find her on the way to the Oriental room. Hmmm?"

"Duck."

"Duck?" He didn't actually duck. She meant the bird. They had given up trying to make her only say only things that made sense. At least it showed the breadth of her vocabulary.

Geoffrey did have a bit of luck, the one he most wanted, and handed his daughter to Nurse. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Geoffrey. I was fixing Miss Abigail's frock – "

"No explanation is required," he said with a reassuring smile. Abigail was eight and rambunctious, and given to ruining clothing. Helena was three years and already an expert sneak. This was the second nurse they'd gone through in three years, and not for lack of trying. He waved to his youngest and she returned the gesture, and Geoffrey promptly continued on his current mission.

He was not eager to open the door, but he shooed away the servants and let it swing open. Of all the things he was expecting, they did not include a wizened monk in a red toga kneeling in front of him and sobbing.

Geoffrey could not understand what the monk was saying. He looked up to the younger monk, dressed the same, who was trying to reassure his elder. "Who are you and what is this about?" They did not look Japanese. They were Chinese, or some variant.

"Please," the young monk said in heavily-garbled English. "News from Moo Shin."

"Mugen?" He figured he might as well step in, which would allow him to close the door behind him, and help the old monk to his feet. Geoffrey looked to the third monk, still on the couch, who was definitely a traveling Japanese monk. "Gen-san?" That was Mugen's name on the island, wasn't it? He felt like Georgie mentioned it once.

"Hai, Gen-san." The monk picked up one of their items and held it to his forehead, as if it would shield him. "Gendai. Moo Shin."

"_His name is Mugen_," Geoffrey replied in Japanese, and dispensing of the confused old monk in the armchair, approached the Japanese native. It was a framed photograph of Mugen, standing rigidly and impatiently in front of a screen. He was older than Geoffrey remembered, but that would make sense, wouldn't it?

He could empathize with the photographic Mugen. The Darcy family – with all extensions – had sat for a photograph two years ago, and the process took over an hour with all the set-up and then the holding still. Still, the quality was impressive, even if it lacked the warmth of an artist's hand. It was definitely Mugen. "_Who are you?_"

"Isagi." The monk stood and bowed. Geoffrey returned it.

"Geoffrey."

Isagi gestured to his companions. "_Monk Dorje and Monk Lobsang._"

The monk identified as 'Dorje' tried his English again. "We have been sent to find you."

"Me?" He pointed to himself for emphasis. He could hardly believe it.

"You. Pemberley. Yongten Gyaltso Rinpoché."

That last bit he didn't get at all. He weighed telling them that he knew precisely who they were looking for. He was more interested in the why. "You have a letter?"

"Yes. Please." Dorje smiled and opened the bag to retrieve a letter, which he touched to his head. It was sealed, and the paper extraordinarily wide. Geoffrey reached for it, but Dorje pulled away. "For Yongten Gyaltso Rinpoché."

"My father is the master of this house, and he has given me permission to accept any gifts offered within," he said, and repeated it in Japanese for Isagi, whom he wasn't willing to trust any more than the others. But Dorje only raised his hands together politely, and Geoffrey was struck by something. The wooden beads wrapped many times around the young monk's bare arms were stunningly familiar. "You are from Tibet." It was not a question.

"Yes." The monk looked surprised, but also delighted.

"Mugen wrote that you were coming," he said, his mouth suddenly dry. "I know why you're here." _And you can't have her without a fight_.

* * *

Mrs. Whitney was at her wit's end with the girls. It was clear they were not properly disciplined at home, and there was little damage control she could possibly do in her few hours a day. "Miss Heather!" Heather Darcy, being much younger, would always start to giggle first, and it would take one glance at Alison Darcy to get her involved.

If either girl could balance a book on their head and giggle, Mrs. Whitney would count it as a success. Fortunately this was not the case, and Plato hit the floor again. Miss Darcy at least had the grace to pick the book off her head before she started laughing.

Mrs. Whitney scowled, which of course made it worse, as neither girl seemed to take her particularly seriously. Exasperated, she turned to their mother, and a look at her confirmed her suspicions. "Mrs. Darcy, you are not helping!"

Georgiana Darcy was in the armchair, slumped in a very unlady-like fashion against the back cushion. Precariously balanced on her head was not one but multiple tea cups made of precious and expensive China, and she treated them so casually it was as if she didn't care whether they fell and shattered or didn't remember they were there. "If this lesson is to be in balance, I believe I am setting quite a fine example."

"This lesson is in proper posture!"

"Proper enough to balance things on your head? It must be the latest ball craze I've so eagerly avoided." She softened her grin. "Mrs. Whitney, you are doing a wonderful job. Please continue."

But she did not, because the door opened and a maid entered with a curtsey. "Mrs. Darcy, Mr. Darcy is requesting your presence."

"Do you know what it concerns?"

"No, marm, but he said to come right away."

Georgiana sighed, and leaned her head to one side so the tea cups slid off neatly into her hand. She placed them on the end table and replaced her bonnet. "Excuse me."

"Mama!" Helena complained.

"You will continue with your lessons until three. You know that." She nodded to Mrs. Whitney and went with the maid. Though there were pangs of guilt, she ignored them. Teachers like Mrs. Whitney were all the rage – one could hardly ignore them. She could only subject her daughters to as little nonsense as possible.

Geoffrey was practically waiting outside the door. "The three monks are here."

And Mugen was not. That was why he had sent the letter, she was sure of it. He was held up. Yet, he didn't tell her to kill the monks, though she would have been rather hesitant to do so. He didn't really say anything about them. "Who are they?"

"Two Tibetans and a Japanese penitent. I didn't understand their names, except Isagi-sama." He walked with her, his intensity betraying every protective emotion he felt. "I didn't say anything about you. Not that that will help."

"Mugen wouldn't have told them anything unless he trusted them."

"Maybe he didn't have to."

"He would have warned me."

"He _did_ warn you."

Seeing a losing battle, she kissed him on the cheek outside the door to the Oriental room. "They asked to see me."

"In so many words. Poorly-communicated words, but all the same - "

"Then I have to see them. And no, don't tell me that I don't have to do anything." She rolled her eyes at her husband and opened the door.

Her guests rose to greet her. It was three monks, one dressed as a wandering monk like Danny Maddox had been, and the other two in red robes like Roman togas with embroidered silk vests beneath them. Their heads were shorn, though clearly a little overgrown from their travels, and in full view as they bowed.

"My wife, Mrs. Georgiana Darcy," Geoffrey announced, and Georgiana curtseyed to them.

"Please, please," said the younger Tibetan monk, and held up a photograph of Mugen in a set frame. "Send to you."

He was still hunched over, holding the photograph to his head, and she approached him and touched it, the longing nearly unbearable. "He sent this to me?"

"Yes, thank you." He gave her the frame, and as she held it, Geoffrey came up beside her and put a hand against her back to support her. It was Mugen, albeit a bit older than she remembered. His hair was flecked with gray and white, but he did not hunch like an old man, like the old monk with the goatee.

"Mugen-sensei. He would never have given this up," she said, _unless he trusted you_. "Where is he?"

"Sit. Isagi will tell," the young monk said, and she looked to Geoffrey, who nodded. At that moment, with such a feeling of dread, she needed him. She needed his touch as he took her hand and guided her to a seat, and they listened to the tale of the monks' encounter with Mugen-san.

* * *

The monks did not join the Pemberley crowd for dinner. They explained they did not eat after noon, and it took Georgiana and Geoffrey quite a while to convince them that they ought to break their fast after such a long journey and regain their strength. They did, but on their own. It was difficult to speak with them – Dorje only knew a little English, Lobsang none at all, and Isagi only knew Japanese but did not seem to understand the reason they were here. They spoke in their meeting of Mugen, whom they assumed dead but apparently had survived, cheating death once again. They did not discuss Master Hyuu, however much it was on the tips of their tongues. The older monk, Lobsang, was caught staring at Georgie, but she only returned with her own stare to match. She was not frightened of him, and not just because of his age.

"Why are they here?" Georgie's father said, cornering her in the library after dinner. Bingley must have known he would not get a straight answer from anyone but her, and they could not be here only to deliver news about Mugen's current state of health, which they did not even seem to know. She hadn't told Uncle Darcy and Aunt Darcy everything, of course. Just enough.

She could not lie to him. "They're looking for me."

"Mugen sent them?"

"Mugen would never betray me like that."

"He did believe you were a reincarnation of his master."

"He never admitted it, and he didn't want anyone to know that he thought I was – including some monks from the mainland," she assured him. "This is meant to be. Otherwise he would have killed them to prevent it."

"He was shot." Seeing her pained expression, he put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm just saying, I don't think they're telling the whole truth about what happened on that island."

"I know, Papa." But she was sure of one thing – that she would have the whole story soon enough.

* * *

Georgie could not sleep. She ought to have been able to – there were no babies to wake her after so many years and so many children. She was tired, emotionally, from the long day. She turned to her husband, but he was rolled on the wrong side, with his good ear in the pillow, so he couldn't hear her at all, and she couldn't bring herself to wake him.

It was early morning. Late enough, she decided, and put something on not to go walking outside, but around the house. The grandfather clock in the hallway told her it was 3:30, far too early for anyone else to be awake – except, perhaps, some monks.

Geoffrey was so protective. As he should be, but she wanted to talk to them alone. They were staying in the rooms by the chapel, the sparse area Grégoire sometimes stayed in when he came alone. She knocked. "Lama Lobsang? Lama Dorje? Isagi-sama?"

The door slowly opened, revealing a lit fire and many candles. The monks were quite awake, of course, and probably in the middle of their morning prayers. Their various items, most unfamiliar and native, were spread out across the table that they pushed to the middle of the room. Perhaps it was what they were used to.

"Forgive me," she said in English, and repeated in Japanese, bowing to the monks. "I – had a question."

The young monk, Dorje, was always smiling. "Yes, please."

Georgie removed the beaded mala from her wrist and held it up, not fully giving it away. Two fingers she kept tightly around the Buddhist rosary. "There is some writing on the beads. I can't read it. Someone once told me it was in Tibetan."

"I see?" he said, stepping back so she could fully enter. The others were watching as she released her grip and let him have the beads. She sat by the table as he held the beads up to the light, finding the one that had writing on it. "Small," he said, chuckling.

Georgie looked to the table. There were several glass discs, like a magnifying glass without the traditional handle. She picked one up and handed it to him.

"Yes, thank you." He had such a pleasant smile. "Hard. Here - Yongten Gyaltso."

"Is that a prayer?"

"Name," he said.

"Whose?"

He gave her back the beads, and put the eyeglass in the other hand. "This yours?"

She realized he meant the eyeglass. "...Yes. This is mine." She didn't know why she said it, but it was familiar. Did they take it from the Oriental room? She'd seen it before, she was sure of it. It had a jade circle around it to distinguish it from the others.

The Japanese monk stood up and said, "_What else belongs to you?_"

How was she to know? The objects were not familiar. There were combs made of ivory, pieces of what looked like jewelry, and other assorted items like the ones in the Oriental room. She snatched up one of the wooden stamps, a square block. Red ink still stained it. "This is mine." She didn't bother with Japanese.

"Yes. Yours." Dorje said. "That is yours."

She set it aside, with the eyeglass and her beads, and looked more carefully now, picking up each item, then setting it aside. She picked up one of the walking sticks, frowned, and set it back. There was a set of ribbons, but she could not settle on one. Back to the walking stick. The other one was nice, with a different top, but she set it back down next to the other. Wrong. It was a bit like a child's guessing game.

She ruminated on the various wooden bowls for rice. The monks did not rush her. Their faces betrayed nothing. Frowning in frustration, she returned again to the first walking stick. The top was nice, but didn't sit properly on the wood. Georgie removed it, and set the wood aside. It was a puzzle. She looked at the other stick and held it by the wood in the center. A good, soft wood. Without hesitation she pulled the brass top off, destroying the piece, and picked the other top up again. It screwed on perfectly, and she set it on the ground with a tap in front of Dorje. "This is mine."

He bowed. "Yes, Rinpoché."

The old monk, Lobsang, who had been standing over the table on the other end very resolutely, burst into tears.

Before she had any time to address it, Geoffrey Darcy, a dressing gown over his bedclothes, burst into the room. "What the hell is going on?"

... Next Chapter - Rinpoche


	49. Rinpoche

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

Notes: Thanks to Jane for pointing out that Cantonese doesn't have it's own script. I really want to go to China and do some research, but making money as a writer is hard.

Lilyemerald made a request for a lineage of the Darcy Junior clan. By 1846, Georgiana and Geoffrey have had 7 children. There are, in age order:

**Alison Darcy** (b) 1/1827

**William George Darcy** (b) 9/1831

**Brian Darcy** (b) 2/1833

**Colin **and** Heather Darcy** (b) 10/1836

**Abigail Darcy** (b) 1838

**Helena Darcy** (b) 1841

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 5 - Rinpoche

Geoffrey Darcy was, understandably, very angry. Though Georgie usually came and went as she pleased, especially in the early morning, she knew the issue went so much deeper, more than his words could express. She did not force the issue. She pulled his head down and kissed him softly on the forehead. "I couldn't sleep."

His eyes met hers and she waited for his expression to settle. He kissed her, and turned to the monks. "I know what you think this is about, and you should know, we're in England now." It was on his lips – _This is my wife, the mother of my children_ ... "And you will answer to me, or I will make you answer to my father, and have you thrown out whence you came."

Georgie had no other position to take than at his side. "Mugen told you how to find me. Why?"

Lobsang spoke in Tibetan, and Dorje translated, "Because he believed."

"He has protected me all these years. I don't understand why he would have a change of heart."

Again, it was Lobsang who answered. The tears drying on his cheeks, he approached her, or got as close as Geoffrey's posture would let him, and spoke to them in his smooth, incomprehensible tongue. Dorje translated, "I told him this was Master Hyuu's dying request. He was not there when he died – he did not know. When I told him, he gave me the name in Britain. The Oracle led us the rest of the way."

Georgie looked to her husband. He must have sensed she needed the assurance, and took her shaking hand. "Tell me what happened."

Lobsang stepped forward again and bowed, and their foreheads touched. "Rinpoché." He continued speaking.

"'I have waited my whole life for this,'" Dorje translated.

* * *

The monks did not sit in chairs. They were content to sit on the ground, on a mat on the floor, and the Darcys obliged them. Lobsang spoke, in a mixture of soft Tibetan and hard Chinese tones, and Dorje and Isagi worked together to translate for him. The words had to come from him. Between them were the items – the stamp, the eyeglass, and the cane – the one that Georgie had picked.

"I came to the monastery a young man," Lobsang's story began. "I was Master Hyuu's secretary. I had been schooled for administration but never formally began preparations for my exams, and instead shaved my head. I knew his first student, that he prepared to be his successor, Hmang Shin. We were the same age. When he died, our master was beside himself. We all feared he would leave us and become a hermit. But instead he sought compassion in Kwan Yin, the Mother, and pledged himself to her for as many incarnations as would be required to learn the depth of compassion. After that he was changed. Kinder, more patient, wiser.

"When Mugen, as you call him, came to us as a prisoner, Master Hyuu made all kinds of accommodations for him, excuses to the authorities for him. Then I knew, he thought he was Hmang Shin returned to him. He tolerated no dissent about it even though he never announced it, not until the very end, when Mugen was long gone. He gave him so much freedom while the rest of us kept to the monastic rules, and let Mugen be the lone wolf who slowly returned to the hand that fed him. It was amazing to watch, though at the time I admit I was very jealous. People pledged themselves to him and he was not as patient, but with Mugen, he knew how to treat him so that he would come back.

"Master Hyuu was, by the time Mugen was a young man, very old himself, and his health was not good. They said the best doctors were in the capitol, but he would not leave the monastery. He did not fight the order to dissolve the monastery. He only pleaded for them to extend it until after his death and he won. He stayed alive long enough to train Mugen. Mugen never said it, but he knew. He never said what he believed. Master Hyuu told me the dark secret of Hmang Shin's suicide and all of the negative karma was weighing down Mugen's soul, so we ought to leave him with his burden.

"When he was restricted to his bed, Master Hyuu said he would announce his successor the next day. By morning, Mugen was gone, and so we all knew, even the few that did not believe it but had heard the rumors. He had taught Mugen, the foreigner, the secret of San Soo. Some of us were very angry. I remember being only sad, as if there was already a death."

Lobsang looked down for a moment, then continued.

"Master Hyuu did not die immediately, though we knew it to be imminent. The very next day, three ambassador monks and their retinue arrived from Lhasa, the holy city in Tibet. Master Hyuu was not surprised. He had sent for them a year before, and was overjoyed that they had come in time. It was then that he told us he came to Guandong long ago, as a child after many years on the run – like Mugen. He was recognized as a tulku – a reincarnation – of some greater monk when he was a very small boy, maybe a year old, and given to a monastery in Kumbum. He resented this life for some reason he could now not explain, and when he was still a young boy, he ran away. Kumbum is near the border with China, and he found passage with some Kashag traders. The Buddha called to him in a dream, but he refused, and bargained to stay in China, but as a monk. All he had with him by then of his identity was his mala, seven beads longer than a Chinese rosary."

Georgie looked down at the rosary in her hands.

"At the end of his life, with so much given to him with the return of Mugen, he felt the need to honor his bargain with the Buddha and his devotion to Kwan Yin. He wrote to Lhasa and paid them a great deal of money to come to him before he died. On his final morning, he was relieved of his vows as a monk of our order. They shaved his head again, even though there was so little hair left, and he took the robes of the Yellow Hat monks once again. They shaved his long goatee, and he appeared so different to us, but his eyes were the same. They began instructing him as if he was a young novice. That night he fasted and called a few of us to his private chambers. Sitting on the floor before us, he asked who would take up this poor man's cause and find his reincarnation so that he might fulfill his vows. Three of us agreed – Kang, Bai, and myself. I do not know what he said to Bai, who was given the rosary, or what he said to Kang, but he gave me the task of identifying the reincarnation. He told me it would be a very long task, the whole of my life, and warned me against accepting it, but I was so devoted to him that I agreed. He told me to look for two black birds and the Mahakala. When we came to rouse him for prayer in the morning, he was gone."

"The Tibetans prepared his body and he laid in state for three days. Birds perched in the windowsill, and each time we entered the room, they would depart and fly Northwest, against the wind. So the Tibetan shaman surmised his soul was to go Northwest. We assumed at the time it meant back to Amdo in Tibet. The monks took his things and set them with others to test potentials. When they left, I and several other monks went with them. It took us a year to reach his old monastery, Kumbum.

"There I stayed for almost thirty years. I became a novice and then a lama, and I was given permission to go about the countryside and look for potential tulkus. Always I failed. There were several I was so sure about at first, but they could never identify the items that had belonged to him – especially not the staff. I began to despair. I had not heard from Bai, who went to Japan after Mugen. This was until recently, when I heard from Kang. He was now an herbalist outside our old monastery, and he said Mugen visited there with a young student."

"That was years ago," Georgie interrupted.

"The message took a long time to reach me. The terrain is very bad. Master Hyuu was very wise. When he died, he bequeathed me a great deal of money. He understood politics very well. Last year I went to Lhasa, to petition the Buddha of Compassion, the Dalai Lama, for permission to leave Tibet and search for my master in Britain. I had to pay a great deal to see him, but it was well-spent. Not only did he grant permission, but he brought forth the Oracle, who would lead the way." He raised his hand spread out. "Green fields. Five towers. A square lake. There I would find the Second Yinje Lama, the Foreigner Monk. And he did not know, but I did, to look for two black two birds. They are on your tapestry, in the room I was brought to."

"Pemberley has four towers," Geoffrey said.

"But you have five flags," Isagi said. "One on the pagoda. From afar, it looks like five."

"It's all on how you interpret it," Geoffrey replied defiantly. "Your Oracle is very vague."

"Close enough," Georgie admitted. "But it was Mugen who told you about Pemberley."

"Yes," Lobsang continued through Dorje's translation. "When I told this to Mugen, he was far more understanding. I had to find him first, as he knew where you were. If he had not been shot, he would have gone with us, I am sure. But we were so sure he was dead, or not to return at least, that we had to go on without him."

Lobsang nodded to Dorje, who removed from their bag a wide letter, still sealed. He touched it to his head and passed it to Georgie. "For you, Rinpoché."

Geoffrey did not protest, so she opened it. The script was unfamiliar and written across the page in neat lines. Below it were handprints and a red stamp. "I can't read this. You know that."

"Yes," Dorje said in English. "From Kundun, the Dalai Lama, in Lhasa."

"The city."

"Yes. Tells ... makes line."

"_The acknowledgment of a formal monastic lineage_," Isagi said in Japanese. "_The first Yinje Lama, Yongten Gyaltso, known to you as Master Hyuu, acknowledged to be an important imprint of the Bodhisattva Kwan Yin, Mother of Compassion. You, Second Yinje Lama, his reincarnation_." Lobsang spoke to him in Chinese, and Isagi translated. "_Kundun grants you the name Lama Nuba Rinpoché, and the establishment of a nunnery in Tibet. When you die, another incarnation will be sought. The line will extend until Kwan Yin decides otherwise_." He added, "_It is a very great honor_."

She did not hesitate. She closed the letter. "I do not accept."

Lobsang did not need a translation. He looked disheartened, but not surprised. He said something, and Dorje translated, "Mugen teaches you angry."

"Headstrong," Geoffrey helped. "And he didn't have to teach her that, I assure you." He smiled at his wife.

"I do not believe as you believe," Georgie said to Lobsang, looking directly at him.

He was not put off by this. He was as resolute as she was. Dorje translated his words for him. "Mugen never admitted what he believed, either."

"I will wait for Mugen. He will come."

"He may be dead, Rinpoché."

She didn't stop him from using the title, whatever it meant. "He will come. He promised."

"You believe," Dorje said. "You believe, Rinpoché."

"In _some_ things," she grumbled, but did not specify what.

* * *

The servants were asleep; they did not respond to the banging on the door. Brian Maddox groaned. He wanted Nadezhda to answer it, as she was the more mobile of the two of them, and he was actually in a comfortable position, but he was the man of the house. She would never say it, and he ventured a guess that if he asked, she would answer the door for him, but he never would. No man would see his princess in some sort of uncouth state without his presence and permission. "I'm up! I'm up!"

Not that that was loud enough, but it did give him the resolution to painfully rise. Nadezhda helped him. "Careful."

"I'm being careful."

"You are being annoyed."

"It's the middle of the night!" He reached for his cane as she put a robe over him and tied it from behind. He could stand on his own, but walking was the problem. His limp bothered his back. "Coming!" His cane banged angrily on the wooden floor as he hobbled through the long hallway to the front door. "I said I'm – "

"_Maddok-san_."

The face was unmistakable, but still shook him, and not just from surprise. Mugen stood before him, haphazardly dressed in someone else's ill-buttoned undershirt and trousers that didn't fit. He was pale, his skin almost white, and there was a darkness around his eyes that couldn't come from just lack of sleep. His gray hair seemed consumed by the night sky and the aura of darkness that surrounded his presence.

"Mugen-san." Mugen appeared very vulnerable, almost exposed, with those black eyes boring into him as they demanded something of him. And all the same they were so distant.

Mugen grabbed him by the arms, his hands cold. It was cold outside, and he had no gloves or even a proper coat, just scraps of someone's vest. "Jorgi."

"She's – "

"She's in danger," he said, not bothering to use whatever English he still had, if any. "Where is she? Pemberley?"

"Yes – she should be. They're very rarely in London or their other home, with all their children. And Geoffrey helps his father with the estate now – "

"You will take me there. Now."

He was used to Mugen demanding things, but he was not used to him being demanding. Brian was awake enough to know that Mugen was an unstoppable force, and that there was no reason to stand in his way and ruin his remaining health trying to do so. "There's the train, but it won't be running for a few hours."

"_Train?_" Mugen didn't know the word. Why would he?

"We'll take you there, Mugen-san." He smiled. "It is good to see you."

Mugen didn't smile. His eyes expressed everything – his appreciation, his urgency – but he had no words, after all these years, for Brian Maddox. He had one purpose.

To save Georgie.

* * *

The younger Darcys were late to breakfast. Instead they returned to their rooms. Though now dressed for the day, neither of them made motions to leave, or for awhile, say anything. With the current style for her gown, Georgie could barely sit beside her husband and get a good grasp on him, much less lean properly on his shoulder. The hoops and corset got in the way. On another day she would have ranted about it, but her mind was elsewhere.

"You think I'm considering their offer."

"No."

"You think I'm leaving you in some way."

"No."

"You're considering tossing them on the steps without a farthing to their name and slamming the door behind you."

He grinned. "Perhaps."

"This was what Mugen was talking about, all these years. It wasn't just the Shaolin monks. He knew I could defeat them."

"Mugen will be the last one to doubt your combative capabilities," Geoffrey said. "Besides myself, of course."

Georgie rolled her eyes. "Of course."

"Mugen wouldn't let anyone define him, not even you," he said. "And he wants the same for you. No one can define you. L-rd knows I've tried, and will be trying until the day I die, but purely unintentionally. Mostly unintentionally," he said. "Mugen would have you away from anyone who would tell you otherwise, even if they carried the letter from the Pope of East Asia or some nonsense, and on this I must agree with him. But I sense you would not easily forgive me if I showed them the door. They have some power over you, even now."

"Geoffrey, they're not sorcerers."

"They came by way of an oracle and prophetic birds and a dead man's belongings, and you would call them otherwise? My G-d, I do sound like my father when I talk like this."

She giggled. "You do."

"But it does not make it less true."

"It does not."

There was quiet again. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head.

With the hand that had the mala beads wrapped around it, Georgie took his hand into her own and squeezed it. "I will hear what they have come to say, and I am sure they will talk my ear off and I will believe at least some of it. But neither the Pope of Tibet or the Pope in Rome could take me from you and from our family. Nothing on this earth can do such a thing."

"It would seem the Fates have pitched in, and not on our behalf."

She looked up at him. "I dare them to try."

... Next Chapter - Back from the Dead


	50. Back from the Dead

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

_**HUGE AUTHOR NOTE:**_ Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in some stores and on Amazon, even though the official publication date is February 1st. I promise to hopefully never, ever make this request again, but:

_If you can possibly manage it, buy this book._

Not only is my entire publishing career sort of riding on it, I went to the freaking _mat_ for this book. My publisher wanted huge revisions on the content, and I wasn't willing to make the story light and happy and ruin the book and the series. Tears were shed, threats about the contract were made, and we settled on a version that I think is suitable - and, if you're looking for new material, has a few different scenes but the same basic story - but my publisher is still wary about it and is holding off on thinking about the rest of the series if book 3 doesn't do well. If you bought previous books, I really appreciate it. If you didn't, that's also fine, and if you don't want to buy this one because it's fanfic, I understand. I don't like paying for fanfic either, which is why I'm still making these stories available once they're published online. But if you've enjoyed my 11 stories for the past few years, please do me a favor and buy book 3. You don't have to review it or like it or even read it, but you have no idea how much it would help me out if you buy it.

For the full story, you can go to the forums, which are linked to on my profile page. You have to be a member to read the whole, rather private story, so sign up. Anyway, I'll stop doing shameless things now and get back to our story.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 6 - Back from the Dead

"One thing I've found that you can count on, should it ever come up in your life again, is that you can trust a monk to be on time to breakfast," Fitzwilliam Darcy said to his eldest grandson, William Darcy, as the three monks were escorted to the long table. With seven children in the house, breakfast would always be a scattered affair, but there was an appointed hour, should anyone care to adhere to it. The monks bowed their heads to him.

"Mr. Darcy," said the young monk, the one who was Tibetan and not Japanese. "Please, thank you." Those seemed to be the only words in English he was truly sure about. Isagi, the Japanese priest, was more concerned with the trays of food.

"My wife," Darcy gestured to Elizabeth as she entered and they turned and bowed their heads to her. "Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy. And my grandson, William Darcy." Looking over William's head, he could see a certain redhead enter the room. "And my second grandson, Brian Darcy."

Brian was just entering manhood, and therefore a head shorter than his brother (but gaining ground quickly), and he smiled shyly as he bowed. When he did, his monkey leapt off his shoulder and onto the table, squealing at the monks.

"And as you can see, this is Saru, who is not permitted on the table," Darcy said with a stern look to his grandson, who withered under the stare.

"He usually doesn't jump," Brian said quietly, plucking the monkey from the empty dish and setting him on the floor. It was true; Saru sat obediently on his shoulder around adults, which was the reason his grandfather put up with him. "He's just curious."

"We so rarely have guests these days that he's not familiar with," Elizabeth said, smoothing it over for her grandson. There would hardly be more room at the table without bringing out more leaves. The Bingleys were often with them, and any Bingley children – and spouses – when they were in Derbyshire. Edmund was up and down from Town, Charles made an appearance a few times a year, and Eliza was always there when Charles was in England. And that was the _immediate_ family, minus the children too young to be at the table. "Please – sit. Eat."

That much the monks understood. The utensils were a bit beyond them. The one known as Dorje grasped the concept more quickly than the others and cut Lobsang's eggs for him, and showed him how to spear the pieces on the fork. The arrival of Alison, followed shortly by her parents, facilitated any discussion, as Japanese was the easiest language to communicate in and they were the most fluent in it.

"Tibet is a kingdom between China and India. Is that correct?" Elizabeth asked.

Dorje spoke and Isagi translated, and by the time it made it to Geoffrey, he smirked. "He says yes, but I don't think he understands the word kingdom. The Manchus – the Northern Chinese – control Tibet now, but it has its own rulers." He listened again. "I have no idea what he said."

"Buddha of Compassion on chair," Dorje said in English.

"Throne? Where a king sits?"

"_Throne_. Yes, thank you."

"I was under the assumption that Buddha was a god," Darcy said.

Georgie translated into Japanese, and Isagi shook his head and replied to her. She said, "Uncle, they believe that the Buddha has living emanations. Like saints. One rules Tibet."

"He must be very old to be a saint," William said, and Geoffrey translated into Japanese. It went back and forth between the monks.

"No old," Dorje said and held his hand out flat to indicate height. "Small. This years." He held up eight fingers.

"You have an eight-year-old saint on your throne?" Darcy said, and looked across the table to Elizabeth. "I've come to a very strange point in my life where I can say I've seen stranger things, have I not?"

"I'm afraid you have, my dear."

* * *

"Mala! Fetch!"

As always, Mala obeyed to the point where she hardly needed to be told to chase the flying stick and retrieve it. The harder part was getting it out of her mouth when she returned to her owner, but Alison Darcy was ready to try. "This is not a game. Drop it. Drop it!"

Mala growled, not in anger but in play, and maintained her clamp on the stick.

"Mala," Dorje said, and the dog regarded him with suspicion, which distracted her long enough for Alison to reclaim the stick. "Dog is Mala?"

Alison re-pitched the stick and Mala went after it, her black coat shining in the morning light. "Mala is her name. Dog is what she is. A dog."

"_Dog_. Name Mala."

"Her real name is Mahakala, but nobody pronounces it correctly. But you probably can."

He was startled by the name, regarding the dog with new eyes. "Yes. Mahakala is _Gunpo_, G-d Protector. Mrs. Darcy Rinpoché name?"

"My mother didn't name her. I did, after the tapestry Mugen sent her. Everyone else was afraid of it. You've seen it? The fat black creature with the sword?"

He smiled and bowed his head. "Yes, thank you."

"Mugen sent it with a letter. She read it to me. She said he told her she would understand why he gave it to her, or something like that. It was years ago. Mugen believes and my mother believes but nobody else does." She could see her Grandfather Bingley sitting on a bench in the garden, trying to use his Cantonese on the old monk, Lobsang, while her mother watched from the side. They were not close enough to hear each other. "You saw Mugen die, didn't you?"

"You know?"

"Mama said you saw him get shot and jump over a cliff."

"Yes."

"But he wrote us about the three of you. So he must still be alive. And you never found his body," Alison challenged.

The monk took a moment to answer, probably trying to understand her before he answered. "Yes. No _body_."

"I know why Lobsang came, and why Isagi came, to translate. I don't know why you came."

"English. Small." He held his thumb and forefinger together. "Dalai Lama order, Reting Rinpoché order. No argue. Important mission."

"My mother will not listen to you. She never follows anyone else's orders."

"She Yinje Lama," he said. "We not _order_. Not necessary."

"And if you're wrong?"

He shrugged. "I not know." The concept didn't seem to bother him. "Lama Lobsang very old, must keep promise to Yinje Lama Yongten Gyaltso Rinpoché. We want him to die at peace. Good state for rebirth."

"Then it doesn't matter to you, if my mother is or isn't Master Hyuu?"

He grinned. "She is, so not problem. Great compassion for Lobsang, relieve his suffering." He looked over at the older monk, once believed to be their leader and now understood to be more of Dorje's charge. "The bodhisattva comes to relieve _all_ suffering. So must come again and again, until job is finished."

It was not a foreign concept to her. Alison's mind wandered to all of the times she had heard her mother, often while cradling one of the younger children, say something using similar terms. Alison assumed it was part of being a mother of so many children to speak that way. She looked at her mother, so concentrated on Lobsang and Grandpapa. "Why do you keep your hair so short?" For emphasis, she brushed her hand gently across her long and well-styled curls. Her mother, by contrast, barely had it longer than a man's, and beneath the bonnet it ran wild and untamed.

He rubbed his head, which had only a slight covering of black hair. "Hair ... world."

"Hair represents the world?"

"World. Not lama."

"World_ly_," she corrected. "Someone who is in the world. Not a monk."

"_Worldly_. Yes, thank you. Cut hair, renounce false pleasure Buddha says causes suffering. Appearance not important to monk." He petted Mala as she ran around him, now disinterested in the stick. "Prayer, study – things important to monk."

The description matched Mr. Grégoire, not her mother. Her mother, who had been cutting off her hair all of these years.

* * *

Georgiana Darcy knew her daughter was talking with Dorje. She saw it out of the corner of her eyes and kept it in the back of her mind, but Dorje was harmless. Everything about him seemed genuine, even to her cynical senses.

Lobsang was another story. He became so emotional in her presence, and she emotional as well and could not keep as clear a head as she wanted around him. She could open her ideas up to Geoffrey, which she had to some extent and eventually would, but he would dismiss them – and she did not feel like being dismissed.

This was what Mugen meant. This was why he was coming.

The danger to her was metaphysical. She could not bring herself to dismiss them as easily as English ration would allow. When she doubted herself as a child, it was Mugen who guided her away from the opinions of others and steered her towards her own, not letting it be clouded by what she read and heard. Geoffrey accepted her and she loved him for it, and he even understood her, but there were some matters where she needed guidance he could not provide. She always missed him, but for the first time in years, Georgie wanted to see Mugen very badly, so much that she was willing to pray to God or Jesus or Buddha that he would suddenly appear.

"Georgie?"

Her husband beckoned her away from her inner world. "What?"

"You're crying."

She turned to him, away from her father and Lobsang. "I didn't realize." Georgie rushed to wipe the stray tears from her cheeks. "I miss him so much."

"Mugen is on his way."

"After being shot? And falling off a cliff? And how would he make it to England intact?"

"I have faith."

"In _Mugen?_"

Geoffrey smiled. "Yes. Please never ask me to admit it to anyone else, but I have faith in Mugen."

* * *

Lobsang Tsering had a weight lifted from his shoulders, one that had been there since he was a young man, and as his strength faded, he began to relax. He could find time for humor, and to smile at the baffling British man who was trying so desperately to communicate through a different and incomplete dialect of Cantonese. Since it was the father of Master Hyuu, he paid special attention and even corrected him, which delighted the white man. And he was very white, his hair like a bundle of snow, but he still had energy about him that Lobsang wished he could feel.

"You say no Westerner in Lhasa."

"Never. A very long time ago, a man came close. He met the Panchen Lama, who lives in Shigatse."

"Not single person?"

"No. Never. Lhasa is the holy city, standing between two great monasteries. It is a place of study and worship. Not for Westerners."

Mr. Bingley was only enticed. "If I was a younger man, I'd try it."

"Why do you want to go to Lhasa?"

"Because no one has seen it. Is not exciting?"

Lobsang laughed. Perhaps it was this enthusiasm that drove Westerners to conquer the world, though the Yinje Lama's father did not look like the conquering type. "I am sorry, Mr. Bingli, but you cannot go to Lhasa."

"Can my daughter take me to Lhasa?"

He didn't know the answer to that. He imagined not, though it would be wise not to say it. "I don't know, Mr. Bingli. You would have to go all the way there to find out."

"I have to pass. Sad," the white man said, waving it off.

* * *

"Mr. Bingley cannot be serious," Elizabeth said, watching the garden from the window of her sitting room.

"Charles is as serious as he ever is about these things, which is very little," Jane assured her, only looking up from her knitting to glance at her husband's animated features. "Humor him. How often does he get to speak Chinese?"

"They are discussing your daughter."

It was an open secret, one the monks would no doubt vigorously deny. Elizabeth waited for Jane's answer. "Many people have come a long way to tell my daughter what to do in her life, and she has never listened to any of them. Even those closest to her. I've quite given up on the matter." Jane added, "But if they mess with my grandchildren, that is another matter entirely."

* * *

"Brian, I don't think he's well."

Brian Maddox looked up at his wife, then back at Mugen, sitting on the floor of the train on a blanket, somehow almost asleep in his pose despite the rocking and noises that would have frightened an ordinary passenger. They'd persuaded him to eat something before boarding, and drink a little at one of the stops, but otherwise he asked for nothing but their help getting to Pemberley. His skin was a sickly pale and his hair was askew, even for Mugen. He would not look either of them directly in the eyes, or discuss how he came to be in England. His purpose was solitary and not even the offer of alcohol could distract him from it.

"He'll be better when we get to Pemberley, and he sees that Georgie's fine."

"There's blood on his clothes."

Mugen must have taken them from some dockworker, as they were shabby and there were spots of blood on the vest. Brian said in Romanian, "I think I'm smart enough to know not to ask how they got there." He squeezed her hand and they were silent for the rest of the ride.

* * *

Lunch was served, and the monks devoured their last meal of the day. The Tibetans explained that they never ate past noon if their health could manage it, though Isagi did not always hold himself to the same strictures, because as a penitent, food was hard enough to come by as it was. There were no set activities, as it was unclear exactly what to do with three monks who barely spoke English other than show them Pemberley's expansive grounds. The monks were surprisingly hardy walkers, and even made it so far as to see Kirkland in the distance.

"And there," Bingley said, half in Chinese and half in English, "is the greenhouse." The new addition was mainly glass, and hosted a small nursery of plants, but was specifically designed to house one tree that could not manage in the harsh winters of Northern England. "I have a tree in there I grew from a seed I took from the Bodhi tree in India. Well, this is the third try. The first two died rather quickly."

Georgie provided an additional translation to Isagi, who passed it on to the lamas. They regarded Bingley but did not offer commentary.

The party eventually scattered; Darcy took his grandsons shooting, though William showed far more interest in the sport than Brian, and his other grandson was far too young. The weather was fine, and a sense of calm set over the grounds as the lamas got themselves lost in the hedge maze, shouting at each other for help in Tibetan.

Lobsang could not keep up the pace for long, and was escorted out by Helena Darcy, who giggled her way into her mother's arms. "My youngest," she said to Lobsang and guided him into the cooler shade. She kissed Helena and set her down, and the toddler went running to join her older siblings. "You understand more than you say, don't you? You spent months on a boat with an English crew."

"Yes, Rinpoché."

"That means someone who's blessed, doesn't it?"

"Yes, Rinpoché."

"I am very blessed. I have a husband, seven children, and both of my parents are still alive. There is nothing else I desire."

They walked to the pagoda. A raven was perched at the entrance, but it flew away as they approached.

"All life is not suffering," she said, contradicting the Buddha's words.

"No, Rinpoché." He did seem to at least partially understand her – or maybe he just wanted to hear her voice.

"Why did you come?"

He pointed to her, then to him. "Ask me to."

"For no other reason?" She could not help but be suspicious. Mugen was chased for years because he knew the secret of San Soo, and now she was its guardian.

He smiled. "No, Rinpoché." Looking over his shoulder, he opened his mouth to say something.

She was not so old, or too much the English housewife to have forgotten everything she was taught. She shoved Lobsang forward, covering her body with his. The arrow missed her and embedded itself in the supporting beam of the pagoda. She recognized one of the arrows from her archery collection, now used for play by her children and guests. None of those people would have aimed for her backside. But she was without a weapon. She spun around, not seeking further protection by running.

Isagi the priest approached, and pulled apart his staff. The blade hidden inside was nowhere near close enough to strike her when a figure came from the sky – or more accurately, the top of the pagoda – and landed between them. When Isagi swung for her heart, he impaled the man between them.

"Oi," Mugen said, facing his monastic opponent. He seemed unperturbed at the notion that there was a blade through his heart. "You can't kill me twice, can you?" He said in Japanese and laughed, and pushed the monk away. When the sword came out of him, it did not draw as much blood as it should have. Only a dark hole remained. Mugen, his hair grey, his face wrinkled, and wearing a cotton, white shirt with the buttons done incorrectly, smiled at Georgie knowingly, even though she was so confused, and she took comfort in it.

"Mugen!"

"I keep my promises," he said, and drew his blade. But he was barefoot, and unsteady on his feet. "I saw it in your eyes, monk," he said to Isagi. "You signaled him to fire. You killed me!"

"And you are not strong enough to kill me," Isagi shouted, his face full of fury unseen before.

"Sensei!" Georgie said, abandoning Lobsang to care for himself in the pagoda and running to his side. "I will fight him. He tried to kill me!"

Mugen took his eyes off Isagi and looked at her. There was warmth behind the cold eyes, blacker than she remembered. "Master Hyuu didn't want to kill Shaolin. He wanted to make peace. He did not stain his hands with them and he would never want you to. Besides, I don't have to fight him."

"Why – "

Any further conversation was interrupted by a gun shot. After politely tapping the false monk Isagi on the back so he was at least aware of the danger he was in, Fitzwilliam Darcy raised his rifle and shot him in the chest.

... Next Chapter - I Shall Fear No Evil


	51. I Shall Fear No Evil

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

_**HUGE AUTHOR NOTE:**_ Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in some stores and on Amazon, even though the official publication date is February 1st. What I said in the last chapter stands.

**After this chapter**, we start skipping ahead in years to hit high notes I want to cover before the end of the series. Just so you know.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 7 – I Shall Fear No Evil

The monk Isagi flew backward from the force of the bullet, especially at such close range. He fell into the long grass, creating an unnatural indentation in the field, and did not stir.

"Mr. Mugen," Darcy said, stepping closer to the body with his rifle still smoking. "I appreciate all you've done for Georgiana over the years, but I am the master of Pemberley, and if someone comes to my property and threatens the life of my niece, they answer to _me_."

As he leaned over to check that Isagi was truly dead, his servant came running, and he handed off the rifle. "Do you think the others are a problem?"

"No," Mugen answered. "Just the priest. He gave them signal, fire on me at home – " He rested one hand on the pagoda's beam for support, but it was not enough. His sword, which was tied to his hand with a cloth, hung limply as his body sagged, and he would have joined Isagi on the ground had Georgie not caught him.

"Mugen-sensei," she said, guiding him to sit on the pagoda's entrance steps. She wiped the sweat from his brow. "You're so cold."

"Oi." He looked at her hoop skirt, and her bonnet, before meeting her eyes. "You look hideous," he said in Japanese.

She grinned. "I know."

Lobsang, now finally on his feet again, removed the shawl over his shoulder and put it around Mugen. "Moo Shin."

"Kin." He nodded, but it was so slight, it was hard to see. "We knew each other in China," he told Georgie. "Master Hyuu thought I was a better student."

"I was more loyal," Lobsang said playfully. "Also I was nicer. You are healed?"

"Of course not." Mugen picked his slumping head up at the sounds of the arrival of Brian and Nadezhda Maddox. Brian walked with a cane for his back, so his progress was slow, and Nadezhda ran ahead of him when she saw Mugen, and Darcy standing over a body. "Nadi-sama."

"Mugen! Did you injure yourself again?"

"No. Still am from before."

The occasional gunshot was not an unusual sound for Pemberley's grounds, so it took more time than expected for the others to come running and discover what had occurred. "Cover him up," Darcy said to the groundskeeper, referring to Isagi, and greeted his son. "The Japanese one is dead. He was sent here to kill Georgiana."

"You knew?" Geoffrey stammered, aghast by his unapologetic father, who usually did not shoot people in his home or anywhere else.

"No, but I deeply suspected there would be mischief from someone. There always is." He nodded to the servant. "A stretcher for Mugen. I suspect he can't walk."

"He ran here," Brian said. "Bolted right out of the carriage ahead of us as soon as he saw the place. Mr. Darcy. Mr. Geoffrey."

"Mr. Maddox. Your Highness," Darcy bowed, apparently not willing to be surprised by anything today, including the sudden appearance of the Maddoxes.

Before the stretcher arrived, Alison did. "Mugen-san!"

Mugen raised his head, which looked like it took a lot of effort for a man who had just been fighting. "Ali-chan?" He squinted.

"It has been fifteen years," Georgie chided him as he looked up at Alison. She wasn't particularly tall, but when standing, she towered over him like any adult. "I sent you that portraiture."

"I didn't believe it," he said, and tried to rise to greet her, but did not succeed.

Geoffrey was the one to take charge to wrestle Mugen over access to his shirt, unbuttoning it to reveal layers and layers of silk and cotton cloth serving as bandages. From a distance he looked almost pudgy, but it was all false. He was little more than a skeleton. "We'll get a doctor."

Mugen laughed. "So you will. You'll lose money on it." He looked to Georgie, who held his hand. "I promised to come."

"And now you're here, and everything will be fine."

He shook his head. "It was not the only promise I made." He did not explain himself further as the stretcher arrived, and Georgie untied the weapon from his hand so he would be unencumbered. "George," she said to Geoffrey, who nodded in agreement, and Dr. Wickham was sent for.

Mugen was escorted to Pemberley, and many people had to be shooed away upon his arrival for his stretcher to fit through the doorway of the guest bedroom. "No," he said, grabbing Georgie's hand when she appeared with the scissors. "Don't look at it. Also it must smell by now."

"George won't be here until tomorrow morning at the earliest."

"Hmph. Waste of time." He squirmed and closed his eyes to refocus. "The priestess said I walked between the realms of life and death. She thought it was unnatural."

"Mugen, there are two monks here who offered to make me abbess of a monastery in Tibet. I'm not beyond believing anything at this point."

"You get the monastery! And what do I get?" He chuckled, then his tone softened. "I got to walk back one more time. I think it was the better deal."

Elizabeth Darcy appeared to formally welcome him into their home with a tray of food and drink. "Welcome back, Mr. Mugen."

"Darcy-san." He turned his head away at the cup he was offered, but with enough nudging, drank.

The surgeon from Lambton was there within half an hour. Georgie and Geoffrey collectively threatened to hold him down before he consented to let the surgeon cut away the wrappings that kept his wound protected.

Mugen was the one smiling when Geoffrey turned his head in repulsion at the open wound, and the green, bloodstained skin around it. "I told you not to."

"Sir," stuttered the surgeon, "how old is this wound?"

"Pick a number," Mugen said. "On the boat – three months? Four? Don't know." He hissed as one the surgeon's tools touched it. "It's not a toy."

The surgeon looked up at the Darcys, a grave look on his face.

"You say, I am going to die of wound," Mugen said in his deteriorated English, out of use for decades. He spoke to the Darcys in Japanese, the surgeon in English. "I am already dead."

"Your heart is still beating, sir."

"Minor ...," he searched for the word, "inconvenience."

The surgeon nervously cleaned and repatched the wound, but performed no surgery. Georgie refused to leave Mugen's side as he rested with the laudanum he'd been given.

"I don't know how he's still alive," the surgeon said to the group in the hallway, "but he has gangrene in his chest. I didn't think that was even possible."

"He wasn't well when he appeared on our doorstep last night," Brian Maddox said, "but he had energy."

Geoffrey went to translate this to the monks, but realized neither of them spoke Japanese. Dorje seemed to understand English enough. "He is dying, Mr. Darcy. He came to die."

"I'll tell Georgie."

"She knows, Mr. Darcy."

Geoffrey didn't want to acknowledge that Dorje was probably right, and entered Mugen's room again. Mugen was asleep, and Georgie was washing the grime off of his forehead and out of his hair. "You're supposed to tell me he's dying."

"Why do I feel as though I am a step behind everyone today?" Geoffrey put his hand on her shoulder. "You have to be ready to let go of him, so he can die." He wasn't sure where it came from, but when he said it, it made sense.

"Mugen makes his own decisions."

"But they're based on whether or not they'll hurt you," he said. "He is an old man. You are probably the only one left in this world he truly cares about. The rest of us are passing acquaintances. But for you, he will come back from death, or so he says." They could both see the struggle and pain on Mugen's face, even as he slept a drugged sleep. "Let him go."

"I can't." She did not stop what she was doing, but he could hear the tears choking her. "It's too soon."

"Lobsang wanted to meet you so he could die, and move on to whatever awaits us next, be it a heavenly paradise or this rebirth business. I suspect Mugen wants the same thing."

Georgie wiped her eyes and went back to stroking his hair as he slept. "He's just arrived."

"I know."

"There's not enough time."

"I know."

"I'll stay with him."

Geoffrey expected that she would. "The Tibetans – do you think they had something to do with this?"

"They're not here to kill me. You know that. They have a much different agenda."

He squeezed her hand. "I know."

* * *

Geoffrey joined the others in the drawing room, where two very nervous and somewhat confused Tibetan monks were being interrogated in a mixture of impatient English and Chinese by Bingley and Darcy. His entrance gave them a momentary pause. "Moo Shin – "

"Will die of his wounds from Japan," Geoffrey said, and Bingley translated into Cantonese. "Mugen doesn't seem threatened by you, Mr. Lobsang."

"They were in school together," Dorje said. "In China."

"They want to declare my wife their saint, not kill her," Geoffrey said in their defense. "Besides, I believe they are the only ones qualified to bury the rogue monk."

* * *

Brian Maddox turned away from the window, where the monks and the gardening staff were using the last of the daylight to put Isagi, or whatever his real name was, in the ground. Dorje attempted to explain that monks were often cremated, but Darcy would hear of no such thing, nor did he have the facilities for it.

"So it's over," Brian said, limping back to his seat on the other side of the bed. "No more Shaolin chasing after Mugen, as if they could find him here. "My goodness Mugen, what will you do with yourself?"

Mugen opened his eyes and turned his head very slowly to face him. "I must be old, because getting drunk and buying a whore isn't as tempting as it used to be."

"I know the feeling." But when Georgie glared at him, Brian blushed. "I meant, I know how _Mugen_ would celebrate."

"You're still no fun." Mugen coughed, and when he pulled his hand back, it was wet and stained. "Don't worry. It's been like that for awhile," he said as Georgie wiped his hand clean of blood.

"Stop squirming."

"Still ordering me around? You haven't changed." He looked over her shoulder as Alison entered. "You have, Ali-chan."

"Mugen-san," Alison curtseyed, her voice more subdued than before. "You did say we would see each other again."

"You remember that?"

"Mama reminded me often enough, and I always believed her. Mama, the others want to see –"

"Bingley-chan!" Mugen interrupted, but they turned to see not Charles Bingley in the doorway, but Brian Darcy, with Saru on his shoulder. Brian was the only son with the Bingley shade of red hair. "No – you must be his son."

"Grandson," he said in badly-accented Japanese and bowed. "Brian Darcy, Sir."

"An unlucky name. Or lucky, I don't know," Mugen said, looking over at Brian Maddox.

"It depends on your perspective," Maddox answered.

"Mugen-sensei, this is my son Brian," Georgie said, as if she had to further introduce him. He's my second son."

"_Second?_"

"I have three. And four girls."

He smiled. "You've kept busy haven't you?"

"I don't like to be bored."

Geoffrey brought all the children in, though only the older ones could make sense of his Japanese or his broken English. William and Brian were curious to meet the man they'd heard so much about, Colin and Heather had trouble making sense of the situation but were eager to try, and Abigail just wanted to listen to him talk. Helena sat quietly in her mother's lap, staring at Mugen but not speaking. "She's shy," Georgie said.

"Cautious," he said. "Waiting to strike."

"Not all of my children are like me," Georgie said.

"Thank goodness," said her husband, and she replied with a glare.

* * *

"Mugen-san! Mugen-san!"

He opened his eyes to water flowing around his feet. The stream wasn't deep enough to bring it much past his ankles after his geta sunk into the silt, and it soothed his feet as it went through his toes. "Splashing!" He said, raising his hand to protect his face. "What did I say about splashing?"

Georgie giggled and held up her find – a rock pulled from the water.

"What's this? We're fishing. Fish. Am I saying it right? Fish?"

"The fish are too slippery," she said. There was always an eagerness in her voice when she addressed him, but it was a happy one, like it brought her joy to impress him. He was not used to the feeling, but he decided he liked it. "It's shaped like a fish, Mugen-san."

The rock was about the right size and shape. He took the stone from her arms, seeing she was about to drop it out of exhaustion. Her little arms couldn't take the weight and were shaking, but the demon-haired gaijin girl didn't show it. He sighed. "It is shaped like a fish, I suppose. And less slippery. But we still can't eat it."

"Make it splash."

"We'll scare the fish – "

"Fish are slimy and gross. Throw it! Please, Mugen-san?"

When people said 'please' to him, they were being condescending or they were desperate _and_ condescending. But Georgie was different. "All right." He turned and tossed the stone in the other direction, away from them and towards the deep pool. It did make quite an impressive display before it sunk. Georgie giggled.

"That's enough," he said. "I have to return you or I'll get in trouble with your father."

"Papa is too nice to punish you."

"Your mother, then." He removed his haori jacket, which was still dry, and wrapped her in it as he picked her up. Most of her skirt was soaked through and her feet were bare, so even in the fine weather, she would get cold quickly. She was no infant, but he could still hold onto her and free his other hand to pick up his sword and fishing rod, slinging them over his shoulder. His muddy geta made a squishy noise instead of the usual clack-clack of wood when he returned to the trail.

"Mugen-san," Georgie said, tugging his kimono. "Where are we?"

He looked down the path, not forbidding but eerily quiet. The colors in the leaves appeared turned one minute, then green the next. His eyes traveled from the hazy trees to the raven, which flew from branch to branch, but never fully settled.

"I know this place," he said.

"Is it scary?" She was scared; he could feel her heart racing, pressed against his.

"No. Not at all." He held her tighter, just to reassure you. "See the bird? It cannot lead you astray."

"What if it decides to?"

"I won't let it." Even against the sudden cold he was not chilled. "I'll get you home."

"Promise?"

He tried to say it not only in English, but with her accent. "Promise."

A painful light his eyes, alien to this place. It intruded, and he groaned and tried to swipe it away.

"Good morning, Mr. Mugen."

As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight now streaming in through the windows, he looked at the face of a man he did not recognize, but who regarded him with some familiarity. "I'm Dr. Wickham." He put a glass up against Mugen's eyes, distorting his vision and making the world more circular, then put it away. "Is the light bothering you?"

"No. Fine now," he said in English. "_Arigato_."

Georgiana appeared in his vision. "This is George, my cousin. You met him when we were children, at Mr. Bennet's house. He was the tallest of us."

Mugen nodded, because that was the easiest thing to do.

"I need to look at your chest, Mr. Mugen."

"No. No more weight." It hurt so much already, even to breathe. He had been battling it for months now and could not properly remember what it felt like before his injuries.

Georgie talked with the doctor in very fast English, which he would have normally understood if his hearing was not temporarily lost to a faint buzzing. He turned his head. "Nadi-sama."

"You want to speak to Nadi-sama?" Brian Maddox said.

"Please. And lama."

He did not hear Brian's response. He did not hear anything beyond the buzzing of voices that were too far away for him to make out, even just at the end of the bed. He forced his eyes to focus, and watch the expressions on the faces of the others. Georgie was upset, and the doctor-cousin was trying to calm her. At least he wasn't touching him.

"Drink," came the sharp order to his left, and he was forced to turn his head again. Alison held a cup to his lips, and whatever went down his throat burned briefly like fire, but in a good sort of way. "It's probably not the best thing for you now, whiskey, but – " She stopped talking. She was too upset. Geoffrey-san appeared above her and put a hand on her shoulder.

Mugen closed his eyes again. He never stopped hearing, and never stopped feeling Georgie's touch as she took his hand and held it. It stabilized him, as if he would float away, but he rested from the light and the demands of the world beyond his mind until he heard Nadi-sama's voice.

"I'm here, Mugen-san."

She was still as lovely as ever. And he still couldn't see her hair, wrapped up as it was in beautiful silks. He'd seen it once, years ago when they were on the road together, and he remembered it was black. "I told the priest to honor my wishes," he said, coughing a little, "and leave the spot open next to Miyoshi. I don't know if he did. If he didn't, dig it up, make a spot." He tugged on Georgie's hand. "That is an order."

"Mugen-sensei – "

He did not answer Georgie now. "Kin," he said his old schoolmate, now the Lama Lobsang, "you bastard, you get to live. But you're older, right? So we're even?"

Kin smiled. "Just about."

"I'm not going to burden you with looking for me. We didn't like each other in this life. I don't want to go through that again. But I will say, I won't rule it out. If it seems good on the other side." But nothing seemed good, at the moment. Stuck where he was, his body weighed on him, worse than any prison he had ever been in. And he was desperate to escape.

He didn't realized he had closed his eyes until he opened them again, and the others were gone. Georgie was still there, by his side, her hand clutching his. It was the only thing he was sure was completely real. Alison was leaving. He had said something to her, and she was crying. He could not remember the precise words and it hurt too much to try. Geoffrey hovered over her and whispered in her ear. Mugen caught his eyes before he left, and Geoffrey calmly nodded his head.

Mugen knew Georgie did not feel the same calm. _I never meant to hurt you, Jorgi-can_. But the words never materialized in his mouth. _If I could relieve your suffering, I would. You must know that by now_.

She finally wiped her face, which did little to dry it at this point. "I can't ask you to stay, can I?"

"I don't like to say no to you, so you would be doing me a favor."

Uncomfortable and in pain, he tried to position himself, and Georgie took him into her arms and let him rest on her shoulder. "I don't want you to leave me. I don't know what I would do without you."

"_Sa_, you seem to manage fine."

"Don't go. Please don't go."

He reached out and clutched her shawl, or whatever her gaijin clothing was. "I have to."

"No one can make you do anything."

"Except you?" He looked up, seeing the tips of her orange hair and the darkening ceiling above her. "Only you." Master Hyuu had only guided him and Miyoshi had never tried. "Of course. So tell me, if you want it so badly."

She sobbed, his hair muffling some of the sound, but it was still as clear to him. In fact, he could hear little else. He could hear her voice and feel her touch, and everything else seemed so very far away.

"Goodbye, Mugen-san. I love you."

"I love you, too." But he would not say goodbye to her. _Maybe we'll see each other again,_ he said, now in a voice she couldn't hear over the gulf between her world and his. She remained as vibrant and alive as she was as a curious little girl. If Miyoshi could have known her ... He would have to show him.

Looking down on her, Mugen smiled. _Yes, maybe we'll meet again_. The phantom warriors were circling him, growing more insistent_. But no promises, Jorgi-chan. They are so very hard to keep_.

* * *

When Mugen passed, everyone outside the door knew, because Georgie wailed and Geoffrey had to pull her away so the monks could take his body.

"He should have died of his injuries months ago," George said to a curious Darcy. "It is beyond my understanding how he lived this long."

"For years she talked about how she would see him again. I never thought I would be comparing myself to Mugen," Darcy said, "but I wish my word was half as good as his."

On a fine spring morning, almost too fine for a death, Mugen passed away quietly, battle scared but unafraid. Lamas Dorje and Lobsang removed his clothing and dressed him in a kimono tied the opposite way of a living person. His bloodied clothing was destroyed, but his beaded bracelet with Kwan Yin's image was placed in a box at his feet with his other belongings, those rescued from his home on the island. Surrounded by flowers and incense, he laid in state for three days, his body pointing north on the floor of the Pemberley chapel. The monks stayed with him, and Georgie visited and sat once with him, if only for a little while. As she turned to leave, she saw Dorje adjusting Mugen's head, which was slumped to the side. He joined her outside the chapel while Lobsang remained with Mugen's body.

"His head turned three times – southwest," he said. "You look for him in southwest."

"In England?"

"I don't know, Rinpoché."

At the end of the three days, the monks placed him in a wooden coffin and Geoffrey nailed it shut with his own hands. On the lid was written his name – Mu Gen – in Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan, and English. The servants carried the coffin into the vault, where it would remain until it could find passage to Japan.

"So long to make him wait," Georgie said, not knowing when they would possibly find entrance to the closed country.

"He's waited for so many years," Nadezhda said. "Almost half his life he's been paying that priest in Nagasaki. He'll wait a bit longer. I'm sure of it."

* * *

The Darcy household held a formal service for all who mourned the passing of Mugen, which included a great many people who had only heard tales, but never met this distinguished Oriental who meant so much to Mrs. Georgiana Darcy. Fortunately they had the photograph so the children who were not in Derbyshire for his brief stay would know what he looked like. Georgie did not weep during the service itself, and even managed to recite the prayers along with the rest of the crowd for Mugen's soul. It was now four days later, and she was positively exhausted. She had cried until there were no tears left.

"All you have brought is death," she said to Lobsang after the service.

"True, Rinpoché. And my death will be next." He did not look sad at the prospect. "Death is as transient a state as life, Holiness. It does not last long. Buddha exists to ease suffering, from one life to next."

Everyone took their turns offering their condolences to Georgiana for her loss, and she surprised her husband by not teasing but graciously accepting her guests, knowing they sought only to comfort her. She cried only in front of her husband or Nadezhda. She did not appear at peace to other people, but she maintained her composure.

* * *

Lobsang did not want to die in England. He was not at home here, and he did not want to travel so far to reincarnate in China again (or so it was explained to a confused set of Darcys). It was time for him to leave. For his sake, Georgie assured her husband, she would accompany him to London with the Maddoxes. Mugen's casket would remain at Pemberley, as that task was for her and Nadezhda, not the Tibetans.

Though the ride was short in comparison to what it had been for so many years, that did not ease the burden of travel. Geoffrey, who had hardly been separated from her since Mugen's death, accompanied them as well, and they stayed in the Darcy house while arranging for the Tibetan's departure. The monks would return to China by sea and slowly make the long journey to their mountainous country.

On one of the last days, Geoffrey went out early to double-check the arrangements, and Nadezhda arrived from her house outside of London ahead of Brian, bringing with her a photographer. "They've come all this way," she said to Georgie, who didn't need much convincing. She was too tired from mourning and willing to listen to her instincts, which told her not to stop what she was doing. With some instruction, she donned the complex monk robes the Tibetans brought for her, and even let Dorje take a few ceremonial snips from her already-short hair. She sat for an hour with the photographer, who would render a photograph for the Dalai Lama of the 2nd Yinje Lama.

"Rinpoché," Lobsang said, bowing to her as she rose from the sitting. Nadezhda handed her a silk scarf and she put it over his head and let it rest on his shoulders, then did the same to Dorje.

"I will see you again, maybe," Dorje said. "In Nagasaki."

"I don't know when I'll make it, Lama Lobsang."

"We wait for sign," he said, smiling as always. "It will be obvious."

She hoped it would be.

... Next Chapter - Wolf and Cub


	52. Wolf and Cub

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

_**HUGE AUTHOR NOTE:**_ Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in some stores and on Amazon, even though the official publication date is February 1st. What I said in the last chapter stands.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 8 – Wolf and Cub

1855 (9 Years Later)

Gunpowder was the most distinct smell in the harbor of Nagasaki. Three American and two Dutch warships floated just beyond the docks, as Japanese recruits trained with cannon after cannon, as much as the Shogunate could afford. After the American Commodore Perry forced open the country to foreigners with his impressive battalion of warships in 1854, the Japanese government was working hard to insure its own, if belated, naval safety, purchasing the latest technology from all who would sell in the newly-opened ports of Nagasaki, Shimoda, and Hakodate. The Americans were given priority and their whaling ships sailed up and down the coast, seeking precious whale oil.

One Dutch steamship arrived in September 1855 with only passengers – businessmen and ambassadors from the Continent, mostly. The passage was expensive and the wild nation of Japan was still deemed quite dangerous to outsiders, whatever treaties had been signed. This particular ship also carried a Japanese, or the remains of one.

"Never seen a sight like that before, have you, Sir?"

Geoffrey Darcy looked at the British Ambassador and turned back to the port city of Nagasaki, with the city of Dejima out in the ocean and the giant steps leading up to the main square. "I was here, years ago. I could not say it is the same sight, though." There were too many American flags, and far more activity than the port had ever enjoyed. Foreigners walked along the docks, on land, without samurai escorts. Some of the Japanese did not have shaved heads and braided hair and a few wore American naval costumes. "No, I have never seen _this_ before, Mr. Ambassador."

A horn sounded, announcing their imminent arrival to shore. Geoffrey was joined by his wife, who was free from the constricting and impractical hoop skirt she hated so much and looked pleased with the prospect. It was good to see her smile; the journey had been smooth, but nonetheless difficult on all of them.

"Our trunks are packed and ready."

He put his arm around her. "At least we don't have to stay in Dejima this time."

"At least you can probably find real alcohol. Beef I wouldn't count on."

"Not that I won't try." He bowed as Nadezhda Maddox joined them. "Your Highness."

Nadezhda nodded to them, but was more interested in looking out at the port. She was still in jet, and it was unclear if she would remain so for the rest of her life, or just until they buried Mugen. She was the only one alone on this journey, though they did their best to make her feel as if she was not.

Brian Maddox was more of a fighter than he gave himself credit for. He made it two and eighty years, having survived being an outlaw, being stabbed multiple times, being in countless bar fights and brawls, and threatened many times by his own relatives.

"I feel some obligation to Danny," he said, grinning through a haze of opium. It eased the constant ache in his back, but made his cough worse. "Though I suppose the older brother ought to die first. Still, I've been watching him my whole life. It's very hard to give up the habit. Not that I've watched him _well_."

"I turned out all right," Dr. Maddox said. He knew his brother was dying long before anyone else did aside from Nadezhda and George Wickham, Brian's doctor. He said he heard it in his voice. Brian's breathing was increasingly labored, as if there was something in his lungs, and it wasn't the opium. He did stop smoking it when he took permanently to his bed, insisting that the strain on his back was lessened by not moving around.

"I don't expect you to be buried with me," he said to his wife, rather unceremoniously. "I would like it, but I relieve you of any obligation you may feel."

Nadezhda turned her head and cried instead of answering him, and leaned on Caroline Maddox's shoulder. She was younger and in good health. She could still have years ahead of her if she did not develop something. Brian took her hand in his. "If you have it in you, and you are ever in the area, dance on your father's grave for me."

She smiled and kissed him. "I will try. He is my father, you know."

"I said it was for _me_. _You_ can show him the proper respect if you like." He kissed her hand. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you children, Nady."

"You filled my life with children."

"They just weren't ours. We had to steal them. But that's how I got everything I have, practically. It's not entirely out-of-character for me, you must admit. I am a gambler and a bit of a thief, and you are a wife beyond what I was worth as a husband."

"You're wrong," she said, clutching his bony fingers. "We were meant for each other."

He grinned weakly. "I think I'll do the noble thing for once, and let you be right about that."

Brian Maddox, the son of Stewart Maddox and the cousin of the earl of Maddox, passed away in his sleep. "The last way he would have ever expected to die," Dr. Maddox said, knowing Brian would have said it if he was still capable of doing so. He was buried beside their father in the family plot in Wales. Only the proprietor of Nadezhda's estate knew if the space beside him would remain open indefinitely or be filled upon her death. She did not share this information. She said he was grateful to see Mugen one last time, even though the circumstances were difficult.

Princess Nadezhda retreated from what little public life she had and remained so until Commodore Perry opened Japan, and made her last promise possible to fulfill. Of all the people who loved Mugen, she was the only one alive who knew precisely where he wished to be buried.

As the ship tossed anchor, the final couple arrived. Alison and Benjamin Foster filled out their group. Alison insisted on the journey even though she was with child, and almost beginning to show. They would be home long before she was due, and if not, she insisted, the child would be born in India, where many proud Englishmen were born. On this, her husband could broker no argument.

Customs was surprisingly easy, and they were set up quickly in the American section of town, which resembled a rather hastily-constructed Yankee shanty town than something part of a Japanese port. The only trouble was that the innkeeper would, under no circumstances, house the body of a Japanese heathen in his establishment, and they made the journey to the graveyard almost directly from the boat.

Nadezhda remembered the Temple, but the graveyard was swollen beyond proportions she could have imagined. Japanese graves were tiny, often only containing ashes, and some built one atop the other. Nagasaki was booming, and so was its population. This was the expected result. "O-priest-sama," she said to the resident temple monk, who looked surprised at her clear and easy Japanese. "We are looking for an empty plot."

"No gaijin."

"He is not gaijin. He is Japanese, and he wished to be buried beside his friend," Georgiana said. "Fuma-no-Miyoshi."

"The oldest grave here," Nadezhda said. "My husband dug it. It was before the plague."

It took the monk some time to find the spot, but it was there. "I always wondered why this was here," he said, referring to a stone slab covering the ground with no markings. Beside it was an old gravestone, covered in moss, and Nadezhda cleared enough away to see Miyoshi's name. Geoffrey and Mr. Foster set the coffin down and had to get the monk to help them move the slab that protected the ground beside Miyoshi's grave from being used for any purpose. There was a layer of dirt and even some plant life on it, but they brushed that all away and cleared the space.

"We will pay for full honors," Georgiana said to the monk. "How long will it take to arrange?"

"Two days, maybe three. His name?"

She had debated which name to use. He had so many. "Mugen."

* * *

The rest of the day was unbearably hot, and the night not much better. Since there was nothing much to do and they were too tired to explore, Geoffrey and Georgiana sat in the café on the porch of their inn, talking to the ambassador. He was quite flummoxed by the language, insisting he was usually gifted with them, but as this might become a permanent position, he was obligated to learn it before. He was not yet established, and instead stayed at the inn with them. "This is not my first assignment. I was in Nepal for several years. Not quite as hot as this, but very rugged terrain."

"Where is Nepal?" Georgie said, having only a vague sense of the country.

"North of India, next to Tibet. And when I say bad terrain – half their country is on the west side of the tallest mountain range in the world."

"That must be very tall," Georgie said.

As she set her tea cup down, she felt a tug on her wrist. Instantaneously she grabbed the little hand and pulled it up. "What do you want?" she said to the boy who had appeared from nowhere. "It's very rude to take something that's not yours."

"It_ is _mine," the boy said. His accent, like his dress, was American. He was indignant, almost angry at the implication of otherwise as he pointed to the beaded bracelet she wore. "_Mine!_"

"So very American," the ambassador said to Geoffrey.

Georgiana did not smile, but removed Mugen's bracelet, which she had worn since his death, and held it in her hand just out of the child's reach. "I will give it to you if you can say my name."

He frowned at this challenge, shifting the weight on his little feet, before he could answer. "Wolf." And he grabbed for it again.

"Michael! No! How many times have I told you – " A well-dressed but somewhat harried American appeared in the doorway, and scooped up the boy before he could grab the bracelet. "Forgive me. His last nurse just quit on me and I'm quite beside myself." He tipped his hat to Georgiana, then the others at the table. "Mr. David Walker. And this is my son, Michael."

The ambassador introduced himself first. Mr. Walker was an assistant to Richard Brodhead, the senator of Pennsylvania. "I do a fair amount of traveling for senators – even those outside my district."

"Which is?"

"Philadelphia."

Geoffrey stood at this turn. "Geoffrey Darcy, and this is my wife, Mrs. Darcy."

Mr. Walker looked down at his son, who was squirming in his grasp. "Say your apologies to Mrs. Darcy, Michael."

"No!" Finally breaking free, Michael ran back into the inn.

"Please," Georgie said, offering the exasperated American a seat at their table. "We understand."

"We have seven children," Geoffrey said. "They can be quite a handful."

Mr. Walker accepted tea, and slowly began to relax in their presence. "I thought traveling might be good for him – to get him out of the house. I can't imagine leaving him to a boarding school, all alone in the city." He was wearing a black band; it didn't need to be said outright that he was a widower. "He was always trouble – not mean-spirited, just ... spirited ... but since his mother passed..." He shook his head.

"How old is he?"

"Five. Nearly six. And where am I going to find an English-speaking nurse? I can barely find an English-speaking carriage driver. They only speak enough English to understand you and ask for your money, not say anything back."

"It's a difficult language," the British Ambassador said.

"We'll be staying at the inn for the rest of the week at least," Georgie said, glancing at her husband but not waiting for his reply. "We could keep an eye on him for you – while we're home."

"I couldn't possibly put you out, Mrs. Darcy."

"You won't," she insisted, and he readily accepted, then excused himself to go find his errant son.

Geoffrey withheld comment until they returned to their room, where his expression said everything.

"Oh, since when are you against caring for children?"

He did not bother to respond.

"He said my name."

"You're wearing a wolf pendent on your neck," he observed. "Though I suppose I would rather have a supervised child stealing my wife's possessions than an unsupervised one."

* * *

The next day was hot, and Alison continued resting at her mother's insistence. Georgiana and Princess Nadezhda visited the cemetery again to see how the preparations were going and light incense for Mugen and Miyoshi, only to be surprised by a familiar face.

"Nuba Rinpoché," the Tibetan monk Dorje addressed them in accented by fairly competent English. "Your Highness." Nearly ten years had passed, but he was still a young man, much younger than either of them, and he had a lot of energy in him. "I have been waiting for you."

"Lama Dorje," Georgie said. "For how long?"

"Two months. When the shōgun opened Japan to foreigners, I knew it was only a matter of time, and requested to be part of the Tibetan delegation." He chuckled. "Actually, I am the Tibetan delegation."

She bowed her head. "Lama Lobsang is dead."

"Yes, Rinpoché. He died in Lhasa after our return. He was in a very good state, very good rebirth I think. He was at peace." He bowed to Nadezhda. "Your husband ...?"

"Would prefer heaven over rebirth, I think," she said. "If he has a choice. He wanted badly to come, but I think he knew he wasn't going to make it."

"He was a happy man," Dorje said, though he probably meant 'cheerful.' Brian Maddox did have a certain vigor of spirit about him. "This is good for him, good for his soul in the universe."

"Thank you. Will you join us to dine tomorrow?"

He shook his head. "I am forbidden to your part of town. The Americans think I am Japanese. I told the priests here to tell me when someone came with Mugen's body, hoping to find you in this way. I am housing at another temple – but you can come. I would like to see you." He smiled at Georgiana. There was nothing false about it; he was very happy to see her.

... Next Chapter - Funeral for a Friend


	53. Funeral for a Friend

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

If you're sick of the Tibetan plotline, it pretty much ends in this chapter. Up next: Darcy and Bingley.

_**HUGE AUTHOR NOTE:**_ Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in some stores and on Amazon, even though the official publication date is February 1st.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 9 – Funeral for a Friend

"Dorje is here?" Alison could not believe it. Neither could her husband, after it was explained who 'Dorje' was.

"Another amazing coincidence," Geoffrey said. "Life seems to be full of them." He did not seem happy or sad at the news, just neutral. Georgiana left her husband alone on this account, at least for the moment.

They quickly discovered, as did all of the other inn residents that Michael Walker was as much of a trouble-maker as his father implied to be. Now free of his nurse entirely (her having vacated the building moments after announcing her sudden retirement), he ran up and down the halls, easily making it past the hastily-assembled locks on Japanese-style doors and into people's rooms. He never actually made off with anyone's items so much as he sat in people's rooms and played with them. He broke the railing on the stairway, put a dent in the front steps to the porch by tossing a rock from his window, and was caught more than once in the kitchen, devouring whatever he could get his hands on. In the case that evening it was sticky rice, mashed into more of a goo, and upon discovering it would stay on his hands, he ran down the hallway, dragging his hand along the wall and creating a long trail of rice-goo as he went until a strong hand grabbed him by the collar and pulled him away from anything he could touch and destroy.

"Didn't someone teach you manners?" Georgie said, pulling him into the communal washroom.

"Mrs. Clark talked about manners a lot." Michael scowled at her. "I hated her."

To his surprise, her expression just softened. "Come now young man – you didn't really hate her, did you? That's positively cruel."

"She was mean."

"Did you give her a reason to be?"

He shrugged, because he didn't have an answer to that that he wanted to give.

"Look at you – you're a mess. Though I can't suppose a child on their own would be any other way." She managed to maneuver him not in, but near the tub, and rolled up his messy sleeves so she could wipe his hands and arms with soap. She wasn't rough like Mrs. Clark. "Where is your father?"

"Some meeting," he said. "Are you my new nurse?"

"No."

"Are you still mad at me about the bracelet?"

"I was never mad at you about the bracelet," Georgie said, rolling up the other sleeve. The shirt could not be salvaged without some serious scrubbing, and not while he wore it. "And my name is Mrs. Darcy, not Wolf. Though some people have called me that."

"Who called you that?"

"The king of England," she said, and watched with amusement as his eyes went wide. "If you're to have any clothing at all, you must take up a hobby that is not as messy." She wiped his face and his chin, but the muck went down further than that. As she undid the top button to his white shirt, she pointed. "Have you always had that mark?"

"You can't scrub it," Michael said, referring to the large, circular birthmark on his chest, to the left side and almost below the shoulder. "It doesn't go away. My father says it's how he told me apart from my cousin when we were babies and they would visit. But Mother always knew it was me," he said proudly. "She said it made me special."

"Was she sick?"

"Father said she was sleepy. He was _lying_."

"Maybe he didn't want to tell you the truth. He didn't want to scare you." Georgie closed his shirt again and took a clean towel to scrub his hair. "He's very worried about you."

"Did he tell you to say that?"

"No. Why are you so suspicious of your father? Because of what happened with your mother?" When he didn't answer, she continued, "Parents always want to protect their children from harm. I would do anything to protect my children."

"Then where are they?"

She grimaced. "My oldest is married. She's upstairs. The others are bigger now – they're in school or adults. I'll see them when I return to England."

"Is that why you talk funny?"

"Yes, that's why I talk funny."

He giggled, and so did she. "You want to be clean before your father gets home, don't you? Then let's hurry up."

"He won't notice."

"I'm sure he will," she said. "I'm sure his thoughts are on you at this very moment."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm a mother," she said, standing up. "And I'm married to a father. Come."

He didn't need to be hauled upstairs. He followed her willingly to his own room, the first quiet thing he'd done all day.

* * *

Mugen's funeral was performed with more pageantry than he had ever known or would likely put up with in his life. Geoffrey Darcy watched the procession of different types of monks through the smoke of incense, his participation limited to supporting a sobbing Georgie, and wondered if the monks thought this man they were praying for was some great noble or religious master. In truth, Geoffrey wasn't even sure Mugen was Buddhist. Mugen definitely skirted the definition of the word. There was a Shinto priest as well, though he'd already been given an Okinawan funeral all those years ago, after he was shot. Nadezhda, a Catholic, recited Latin for him, so his bases were most assuredly covered. Though Mugen had been a thief and a criminal, responsible for the death of dozens and maybe hundreds of men, he was not a bad man. In Geoffrey's estimation, he was a very good man, and he was everything to Georgie. She might as well be burying her father from the way she took it, even though she'd been through this once already in Derbyshire. Now it was final. There would be no more surprise appearances from beyond the grave. Mugen was where he wanted to be – at home, beside the only man he had ever admitted to loving.

For all the guidance Mugen had provided Georgie, Geoffrey cried. For all of the protection he had afforded Alison as a child, Geoffrey cried. And for all the respect Mugen had shown him – albeit subtly – when Geoffrey treated the man like an interloper, Geoffrey cried.

When the ceremony was done, the grave was properly covered, and the stone set aright, Georgie excused herself to collect herself on the steps of the temple. Dorje, relieved of his duties, joined her, and they talked for a few minutes. Geoffrey was too far away to hear them, but he could see them. At first it was comforting words about Mugen, and then the topic changed. Geoffrey kept his face neutral, reassured an upset Alison, and waited for Nadezhda to finish her prayers before they returned to the inn.

* * *

Georgiana went to her trunk that night, the second one off to the side, only to discover there was a lock on it. Not that she couldn't pick it, even in the poor light, or locate the key, but the point was that she specifically remembered removing the lock before the funeral.

"Georgie."

She turned to see her husband sitting in the corner. He rose. "I've never taken a stand against you, not through everything I thought was nonsense or at the very least dangerous knowledge. I believed you could make your own decisions, and that you ought to. Also, I believed you might strike me if I attempted to say you couldn't." He smirked, briefly, then returned to his former demeanor as he put his hand on her cheek. "This is not a grown woman. This is a boy. And you know how impressionable children are."

"This would not change anything – "

"This would change everything about his life, if you let it," Geoffrey said. "What do you think you would have done, if Mugen had told you whom he really thought you were?"

"Mugen thought I was _me_," she snapped, "and damn anything else."

"I cannot change your mind on this – I already know that. But I cannot stand idly by on this one, Georgie. For Michael's sake. He deserves a normal life."

"His life is normal now?" Georgie demanded. "He needs someone who understands him. Every child who is different wishes there was someone, somewhere, who understood them. I would do this for him even if Mugen had not done it for me. He is lost. He is scared."

"These things will pass in time. It is not our responsibility."

"I cannot leave a child behind and say it is not my responsibility! Not one!" She was crying again, even though she wanted to be firm. She wanted to be strong, not just against her husband's concerns but for the coming event. "I will not let anyone suffer!"

He opened his arms to her and she collapsed into them. So much for being strong.

He brushed her hair as she buried her head in his coat. "Georgie, you cannot take the world upon yourself. Maybe the Pope of Tibet thinks you can, but he cannot define you. Your entire life, you have not let anyone define you – even me. And even Mugen. He was just smart enough not to try. He would ask for the same respect."

"Mugen is dead and gone," she said, startling him. She could feel it, and knew it was not something he expected to hear from her without being forced. "I loved him, but he has passed from this world. If he returned in some form or this is merely someone I have to help is not relevant. This is another person and I will not let him pass me by when he needs me." She added, "I won't tell him. Dorje would, but I won't let him. Michael will have his own life no matter what I have to say about it."

Her husband weighed his words and said, "I suppose if he really is the kindred spirit you believe him to be, then that is true." He kissed her and gave her the key to the trunk. "I'm going."

"Of course."

"Do you intend to tell his father?"

She rolled her eyes. "Do you think Mr. Walker would understand?"

"When I hardly do? I think not."

* * *

Michael was roused from sleep not by the return of his father but the soft sounds of Mrs. Darcy's voice. "Wake up, Michael-chan."

"Is my father home?"

"No, he's still out."

The prospect of being up and about – at night – while his father was out was very enticing, so he accepted her waiting arms, and she wrapped him in a wool blanket and carried him. There was nothing to light her way and he couldn't see much in the dark hallway, but the room she set him down in was well-lit by lanterns and candles. There was a short table in the middle of the room covered by a blanket, and several items on it. On the other side of the table was Mr. Darcy, who did not have a very happy face on, and a Japanese man in red robes and a golden vest.

Michael looked up to Mrs. Darcy, who removed the blanket from him and wrapped it over her shoulder. She was wearing the same robes as the man and she patted his head.

"Thank you for joining us," the Oriental said. He had a very big smile and he spoke English strangely, like everyone else in this country. He held up the bracelet from before. "This is yours?" Not waiting for an answer, he set it down on the table. "What else belongs to you?"

Michael was tempted to claim it all, but he doubted he could be off with it in one bundle and he didn't want to upset Mrs. Darcy, whom trusted him for some reason. He would get more if he just chose. "This," he said, pointing to the jade horse he liked, which was nicer than the other toy horses next to his. He grabbed it and set it in front of him, and looked up. The Japanese man just nodded, and Mr. Darcy said nothing.

There were three little portraits, all in frames, but he didn't know the people in any of them. All portraits from old times looked the same to him; the women were always pale and smiling just a little and the men looked like women but were dressed differently. He put his hands on each one of them, something he wasn't allowed to do with paintings, but no one had any objections. He ran his thumb across the paint for the picture of a young lady with a baby in her lap and said, "This is mine!" He wanted it; it was his. He set it beside the horse.

At one end of the table were two swords – why didn't he see them before? He'd always wanted a sword, like soldiers wore, and even more now that he was in Japan and Japanese people always got to wear swords, even the ones who weren't soldiers. The Japanese one was heavy and when he tried to lift it, Georgie steadied it for him. He huffed and tried to pretend he wasn't weak and grateful for the help. It was too heavy, so he put it down.

The other sword was much lighter, even though it was still very big and heavy by his standards. It was longer and straighter, and it had prongs on the handle. He held the handle and pushed forward with the sword, imagining poking his enemies with it. "Mine!" He didn't want to put the sword down, but he couldn't hold it up, so he put the strap over his shoulder and let it fall, hanging off him but mostly on the ground. He smiled up at Mrs. Darcy, and she smiled back.

"What else? What else?"

There were so many things he didn't know if he could use. There were eyeglasses, but he didn't need them and thought they made you look foolish. There were stacks of papers, but he couldn't read very well. He tried out all of the little bells, ringing them each in turn, but set them aside. There was only the flag left, and he unfurled it, but he couldn't read the words. It was Oriental language. Michael waved it in the air. "This is mine!"

"Yes, that is yours," the Japanese said, and Mrs. Darcy started crying.

Suddenly the things weren't so interesting anymore, even the sword, though he wouldn't let it go. He tried to hold it up as he walked towards her and she sat on the ground against the wall. It was very awkward, but the sword was his and he would not let it go now that he said it. There were tears in her eyes, and he didn't know what else to do except hug her like he used to hug his mother, and she wrapped the blanket over her shoulders around them both.

"I will always protect you, Michael-chan," she said. "Even when we are very far away. There was always someone there for me and now there will be someone here for you. I promise."

He didn't know what she meant – she was married, she certainly couldn't be his mother even if she got divorced and married his dad, and she lived in England. But it didn't matter at that moment, as she rocked him to sleep.

* * *

"Do you really have to leave?"

Georgie finished her prayer and lit the final incense stick before rising from Mugen's grave. She took Michael's hand as they began their descent from the hill to the town beyond. "Yes. Alison needs to go home."

"But you don't have to!"

She smiled. "I have to. I came because I promised my teacher I would come, and now I've fulfilled that promise, and it's time for me to leave."

In truth, a month was not a long time to spend after three months at sea, but her visit to Japan – likely her final one – was completed. They lingered a few weeks, buying some things and seeing sites that had not been available to them in 1820, and Georgie tutored Michael on how to read and write, neither of which he had perfected. With those two things coming along, his father was perhaps the least eager person to see them off. But Michael had his own objections. "When will I see you again?"

"I don't know, Michael-chan. Someday soon. We'll write until then."

"Will you visit me in America?"

"Maybe. Or you'll visit me in England. Your father travels a lot. Surely he will come to England and he will bring you."

Dorje met them at the docks as Michael was reunited with his father. "I am glad we found each other," Dorje said. "How did you know?"

"The bracelet, then the birthmark where Mugen had his tattoo," she said. "And born Southwest, in Philadelphia. But I knew anyway, when he called me wolf."

"But you won't tell him?"

"He is who he is," she said, watching Michael say his goodbyes to Alison and Nadezhda. "Michael Walker. And he will grow into this person, too. I can only support him."

"If that is what you wish, Rinpoché. Will I see you again?"

"Only if we both live a very, very long time," she said. "Goodbye, Lama Dorje."

"Goodbye, Nuba Rinpoché."

They touched foreheads and separated as the ship was finally loaded.

"I don't know what you've done, or how I'll replace you, Mrs. Darcy," Mr. Walker said, his hands resting on his son's shoulders. Michael could hardly be called a good little boy, but under her instruction he found focus. "Not to imply you can be _replaced_."

"Of course not." She was joined by her husband, who was both sad to leave and eager to return to England. "You will come visit us?"

"I'm sure we can find some room at Pemberley," Geoffrey said.

"Father! Can we?"

"I will consider it." Mr. Walker's answer was enough to satisfy Michael for the moment.

It wasn't until the plank came down that Michael broke from his father and ran to tug at Georgie's skirt. "Don't leave me, Darcy-sensei!"

"I must. Britain is not so terribly far away. We'll see each other soon."

"Promise?"

She took his hands off the hoop lines of her skirt and kissed him on the head. "I promise."

... Next Chapter - King Knut


	54. King Knut

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

This chapter actually takes place at the same time as the previous chapter, but involves the characters back in England.

_**HUGE AUTHOR NOTE:**_ Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in stores and on Amazon.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 10 – King Knut

1855 - England

"Well, Darcy, we've gotten old."

Fitzwilliam Darcy rather elaborately turned to look across the bench at his old shooting partner. They no longer shot, but they still met at the halfway point between their houses, where a bench was built and they could sit together as if they were to embark on a new expedition. "I came to that realization years ago. Is your intellect intact or has something sparked the mention of this stale revelation?"

Bingley smiled. "I was about to say, 'Do you remember when?'"

"Ah, yes. The elderly must start all their phrases with that."

"A good segue."

"Indeed." But it did not segue into anything. It was a fine day in Derbyshire, and Darcy was content to enjoy it peacefully, as much as Bingley would afford him. Still, he would not trade companionship for total silence. Eventually he had to ask, "And what was to be the end of this sentence?"

"I've forgotten. Some comment about how you would never leave Pemberley unattended when there's a half-empty ledger sheet."

"William is more than competent at the job, if he would commit himself to it," he said. William Darcy was four and twenty, and in his father's absence, the one who handled Pemberley's business affairs. When not given this burden, he would be off riding, or in Town. Brian was the quieter one, just returned for break from law school, and more apt to a desk and a work schedule, but Brian would not inherit Pemberley. Colin, the third grandson, was at Cambridge. "I suspect he will give it a solid hour before handing it to the solicitor. Two if I am generous in my estimation."

"He is young. He has better things to do with his time, I imagine."

"I'm sure he thinks he does." Darcy was master of Pemberley at four and twenty. He did not have fond recollections of those stressful years before he met Elizabeth. "Perhaps I am a bit hard on him."

"Geoffrey will be home soon, and then he can be hard on him for you."

Geoffrey Darcy was now the de-facto master of Pemberley's concerns, after wrestling the ledgers from his father's shaking, arthritic hands. It was not a power play so much as a concern, Elizabeth carefully explained to Darcy as he ranted afterward. Geoffrey wanted his father to enjoy his remaining years. Darcy could not properly explain the fear of not knowing what to do with himself, only to discover he filled the time quite easily with his grandchildren, Bingley's grandchildren, and his many, many nieces and nephews. That and a good nap in the afternoon. "That dog is back," Darcy said.

The dog, a mutt of some kind, had been wandering around their collective grounds for weeks. "Of course he's back," Bingley said. "After all, I do feed him." They estimated that the dog was probably abandoned by its breeder for being an accident of an unplanned mating, and had been scrapping for himself for some time. He was young, barely more than a puppy, but his fur was less mangy than when he first appeared. He came whimpering up to Bingley, who already had a bit of biscuit from breakfast in his hand. "Here you go. Goodness, you gobbled that right up. You ought to come round back at Kirkland and the cook will feed you properly."

"I would prefer if your cook's hands were not covered in slobber from a stray dog before he fixed my dinner."

"When did you get so health-conscious? Either way, he's clearly not ill. I would say all things considered, he is in fine form." Bingley picked up the stick he had ready and tossed it. "Fetch!"

The mutt dashed after the bait with more energy than they had collectively on a good day. It was refreshing to watch him race down the hill, then back up to offer up the stick to his would-be master with eyes begging for approval – and more entertainment.

"I never had a dog as a child," Bingley said, as the game of fetch continued. "I always wanted one, but Louisa had a cat and we were all frustrated enough with that, and the grounds to our old house weren't very large and my mother didn't want the hassle."

"You certainly made up for it in your choice of animal companions, if exoticism counts for anything."

"I suppose." When the dog returned this time, Bingley petted him on the head. "What should we name him?"

"We?"

"He always sees us together. I think he might suppose us equal and is just waiting for you to engage him. Isn't that right?" The last question was directed to the dog, who looked up at him as he gestured to Darcy. "What will it be? You ought to contribute before I come up with some wild Oriental name."

"You are a mind reader," Darcy said. "Reginald."

"No, too common. I almost feel as if you've had a dog named Reginald."

"My male dog's name was King. Well, Arthur, but everyone called him King."

"Your Romantic period."

"Yes," Darcy grumbled. "Charles."

"No, far too many of them running around. We are practically rabbits. You could say 'Charles' in my house during the holidays and four people would look up."

"Paul."

"I feel that – " Bingley looked up from the dog. "You are sporting with me now. How do you know his name?"

"I've heard it mentioned a few times over the years," Darcy said, referring to Charles III's lover. Bingley's son was in England a few times a year – far more now that travel was so much easier – and the people of Derbyshire had never decided on what scandal kept the Bingley heir from marrying and inheriting Kirkland (as it was well-known by now that Bingley's will was provisional and Kirkland would go to the older married son, which was Edmund). Some suspected a Catholic or even a heathen wife from India (forgetting it was Edmund, not Charles, who traveled to India for business). Others thought he was pining over a lost love. Some rather tragic story was forever floating around, to surface when Charles made an appearance, but nothing ever came near to the truth and so long as it stayed that way, they did nothing to quash any of the rumors. In fact, Charles was quite amused by them, especially the more dramatic ones. "That is not, I assume, your only association with the name Paul, but perhaps the strongest one."

"You would assume correctly." Bingley blushed. He met Paul once, on a trip to Paris when he toured the Continent with Jane, her wanderlust incited by their trip to India. He liked the fellow and beyond that left well enough alone. His son was happy, and he decided to end his concerns there. "Fitz."

"I will not dignify that suggestion with an answer."

"Knut."

"Is that some childhood name I shall now refer to you as?"

"He was king of England, before the Norman invasion. Four generations before Harold, or something like that."

"Then name the dog Harold!"

"What fun is that?" Bingley scratched the dog behind the ears. "What do you think? Would you prefer a name Darcy has to work to pronounce, or the name of my landscaper?"

"Bingley, we have been friends these many long years, and I am beginning to regret it."

"You have not severed our friendship over worse offenses. I doubt you will do it now. Dog, I name thee Knut." He handed Darcy the second biscuit, and Darcy fed the dog. After that it would not leave his side, sniffing his hands for more. Knut picked his ears up at a child's laughter. It was Cassandra's youngest girl, Katie.

"Grandpapa!"

"Don't pet him," Darcy told her, as she attempted to grab the dog's fur with her tiny fists. "He's not been washed." He did not rise at the approach of his youngest daughter, now happily married with four children. Bingley did rise, leaning on his cane. "Cassandra."

"Father. Uncle Bingley." She pulled her daughter away from the dog. "Where did he come from?"

"We don't know, really. He's a stray – must have been discarded as not worthy to sell." Darcy shielded his eyes from the bright sunlight; he had not brought his dark lenses because the morning mist was still settling when he stepped outside. Cassandra and her husband and children were staying with them for a duration, while the house was emptier in the absence of Geoffrey and Georgiana. "What is it?"

"I've come to tell you Aunt Kincaid has arrived. And she says not to rush. You have plenty of time to see her."

"I would have liked to see Darcy rush," Bingley chuckled, and Darcy only glared in response as they made their way back to Pemberley. The dog followed, wandering a bit but not straying too far, but Darcy did not permit him in the main hall.

"Have him washed," he said to the servant at the questioning look and turned his attention to his guest. "Georgiana."

"Brother!" Though her blond hair was now gray and her face lined by her years, Lady Georgiana Kincaid (nee Darcy) still had a girlish enthusiasm about her, especially when seeing her brother. She was just out of jet for William Kincaid and her son Robert was now Lord Kincaid. She had every right to remain in her Scottish home, but that did not stop her from visiting Pemberley a bit more often. "Mr. Bingley."

"Georgiana."

"Have you heard from Geoffrey or Georgie?"

"No, and I do not expect to. The post is something they have yet to perfect."

Bingley excused himself to return to Kirkland, and Darcy and Georgiana were joined by Elizabeth for a late lunch.

"This is so odd," Georgiana said as they sat down at the table, now with most of its leaves pulled out. "Just the three of us."

"Yes," Elizabeth said. "It has not been this way in quite awhile. It has been so quiet here, even with Cassandra and her husband visiting. It does not quite make up for all the children being at school or in London."

"Where is William?"

"He went out riding just before Georgiana arrived," Elizabeth told him. "I suppose it's not worth trying to find him. He'll reappear in time for dinner."

"Of that we can be sure," Darcy said as he buttered his roll. "Anyway, my son should be home soon and then we will have all of our mischief-makers back."

"Assuming they do not stop in India."

"A Darcy born on foreign soil? Never."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "India is not so exotic. It's a colony."

"So is China and now perhaps Japan will be an American colony. That doesn't leave many exotic places in the world for Bingley to obsess about. A bonus, I suppose, of living in these times."

"Africa is still very untamed."

"What's all this talk of other countries?" Georgiana interrupted. "You'd never leave Derbyshire if you could manage it. I have had to practically drag you to Scotland on every occasion and it is part of Britain."

"I like Derbyshire."

"No one could possibly argue that point, my dear," Elizabeth said. "But the world has changed around Derbyshire, whether you like it or not."

"And why didn't I notice? What were we doing?"

"Raising four children."

"Oh yes." Darcy returned to his meal. "That would explain it."

* * *

"Knut! Fetch!"

The dog responded with vigor to the command, barking with delight as he went after the stick, however buried it now was in the brush. Darcy stepped back and sat down, waiting for the dog to return.

"I thought he was Bingley's dog?"

He looked up at Elizabeth and beckoned for her to sit beside him on the bench. "It has not been established. He only named him."

"And you did not object?"

"The dog does not object. Of course he is a dog – what does he know of proper names?"

Elizabeth adjusted her bonnet against the sun as Knut returned, and was rewarded with another toss of the stick. "Does he ever tire?"

"Ah, the glamour of youth. He can't be more than a year old. Less, probably."

"And your activity is to toss a stick."

"Ah, the limitations of age."

She put her hand over his. "You are hardly an invalid. I doubt you ever shall be."

"How do you figure that?"

"I can't imagine you would tolerate it."

He laughed and kissed her. Knut returned again to sniff at Elizabeth's gown, and she took a turn with the stick. It did not go quite as far, but it made for a happy dog anyway.

"I wish to offer Georgiana a permanent residence again," Elizabeth said. It was not the first time since Lord Kincaid's death that they opened the doors to Pemberley and offered her a place in her old home. "I suspect she will accept. Two of her children are in England now anyway." She added, "And now that she's out of jet, we can send her to London for the Season. I'm sure she will be a great success."

"Is that a greater insult to Lord Kincaid or me?"

"I would never insult my better. Society would not tolerate such a slander."

"You have not answered the question."

She giggled and leaned into him. "Indeed. I have not."

* * *

"Charles!" Jane Bingley called, referring not to her husband or son, but her grandson. Charlie Bingley (the first), the son of Edmund Bingley and heir to Kirkland (provided his uncle and namesake did not marry, which was not considered a likely prospect), had returned from Cambridge ahead of Colin Darcy, having finished his exams early. Like his father, he had a head for mathematics. "Your father is looking for you."

He looked up from his work in the ever-expanding greenhouse, full of a variety of plants his father and grandfather collected seeds of in their travels. Not all survived, but those that did, did so only with careful attention. "Grandmother. Do you know what he wants? I'm not much for paperwork right now." He held up his hands, which were covered in topsoil.

"Then wash up. You have a faucet! I can only imagine what it would have been like to grow up with such convenience." She nudged him on and he entered the main house.

"You are hard on him," the other Charles Bingley currently in residence said from down by the Indian fig tree. He was watering the roots, trying to preserve it through another season away from its natural climate.

"Barely." Jane was doing some of Julia Bingley's tasks, as the latter was caring for her youngest girl, who was sick with a cold. "Didn't you have to wash up as a child?"

"First, he is hardly a child. Second, yes, and I despised it. What does Edmund want him for? He is on break. He should do as he pleases."

"Something about travel plans for his year abroad. Edmund wants a traditional tour, of course, but Charlie wants to go to South America."

"South America?"

"The very south, the tip of the world. There are tribes there that have never seen a white man and some such nonsense."

Bingley grinned. "Well, he is a Bingley. I won't pretend to be surprised. Remind me to tell him to bring home some seeds. And live plants, if he possibly can."

"I would say not to encourage him, but that would be a rather useless gesture."

"It would. Some things never change."

"I thought you subscribed to that belief that change is the only constant?"

"And the cause of suffering, to quote the Buddha," he said. "And no, I prefer not to subscribe to it entirely, and not entirely because of the threat of hellfire for pagan beliefs. Some changes I have encountered have been very good for me."

"Like running water."

"Yes."

"And a greenhouse."

"Yes. Much better for the flowers. They should be ready again for our grandchildren's weddings."

"And great-grandchildren."

"Indeed." He wiped his hands and reached for hers. "If we're going to list every good thing that has come my way, we might as well be sitting, because it will take a long time, and I am inclined to sit more than stand these days. Or should we skip to the most important one and say my marriage?"

"Let's." She accepted his hand and squeezed it. "_Your_ marriage?"

... Next Chapter - The Bishop and the Saint

* * *

Historical note: The real spelling of Knut is "Cnut." I rejected this spelling for a lesser-used alternate because it's a bad anagram.


	55. The Bishop and the Saint

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

This chapter actually takes place at the same time as the previous chapter, but involves the characters back in England.

_**HUGE AUTHOR NOTE:**_ Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in stores and on Amazon.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 11 – The Bishop and the Saint

Though it was Georgiana Kincaid's great wish to see her other brother, the circumstances surrounding it were less than preferable. When the weather became more amiable for travel, they received word that Caitlin Bellamont had died of some pain in her stomach, and Grégoire Bellamont very much wished for their presence at her funeral. The Darcys and Lady Kincaid departed quickly, making the first steamship to Ireland that they could catch.

Though the Irish countryside had been ravaged by the famine and lay disastrously empty, the house where Grégoire and Caitlin had made their home was still a quiet oasis from the decimation of their country. Caitlin was buried in the overflowing cemetery of their parish church, which the priest told them was only a quarter of its current size before the feminine, just ten years ago. Georgiana embraced her grief-stricken brother as Darcy and Elizabeth greeted the other mourners, Patrick Bellamont and his wife. Patrick lived in Dublin, where he was an assistant to the Chief Justice of Ireland. Though more than decade younger, Darcy was struck by how much he had come to resemble Geoffrey, the undeniable proof of his Darcy heritage.

"We are so sorry for your loss," Elizabeth said to him, as Grégoire himself was in no condition to properly receive any guests.

Patrick bowed his head to her. "Thank you, Aunt Darcy."

"She was a very brave woman, your mother."

"She dedicated her life to raising me, and I was not there when she died," Patrick said, and his wife put a hand on his shoulder to support him, though he was in no position to topple over.

"I understand it was very sudden," Darcy said.

"Yes."

"It is difficult to see a loved one pass. I think she would have liked to spare you that suffering."

This answer seemed to suit Patrick, who nodded, and the receiving line continued.

There were a great many priests and Irish politicians present for so private a ceremony. One way or another, the open secret of Grégoire's columnist identity and his wife's death after a brief but intense period of illness made its way around society in Dublin and Belfast. Grégoire received his guests after collecting himself, as a proper host should even after burying his wife, but he looked very relieved to see them gone. He retreated to the chapel with such zest that no one dared to follow except Darcy, who waited awhile before taking a seat in the pew beside him. It was restored from a dissolved monastery and lovingly carved by Grégoire's own hands.

"I built a home of stone for my family," Grégoire said, "and it lasted longer than the people it was meant for."

"Some would consider that leaving their mark. Making the world a better place than when they found it. You made Mrs. Bellamont's world a better place."

"The comforts of this life are so fleeting."

"Is it not a boon then that you have given so much of your life to worship the eternal L-rd, in whose house your wife now dwells?"

Grégoire did not answer. He looked at the floor in front of him, and Darcy did not probe more answers from him. G-d forbid Elizabeth were to predecease him, he could not imagine he would be in any better shape.

* * *

"They're already talkin' about talkin' ta me Pa." Patrick slipped into his mother's thick brogue when he was tired, and especially when he was drunk, which he was by the time the final visitors shuffled out and left him at his mother's kitchen table with his aunts, uncle, wife, and a bottle of whiskey. "The priests. But they won't ask today. Maybe tomorrow."

"Is there not a waiting period for a mourning husband before he considers taking vows?" Georgiana asked. There was only one reason the priests could be inquiring after Grégoire, after all. "There is a period before he can remarry."

"That's how they get some of their churchmen," Darcy said. "Men in despair. With no want to marry again."

"He will not say yes," Patrick said. "Not immediately. 'e's smarter then dat. But it will help if someone's here for 'im."

"He's welcome at Pemberley," Darcy said. "We will offer tomorrow. I assume your work keeps you in Dublin?"

"Aye, Judge LeFroy is a tough old man for an Englishman."

"I thought Tom LeFroy was born and raised in Ireland?"

"He's a Protestant Englishman," Patrick said. "Nobody's denyin' it."

"He hired you."

Mrs. Bellamont put her hand over her husband's. "He's a hard worker."

"If Da won't join us in Dublin, he might come ta England," Patrick said. "I jus' don't want him ta be alone."

"We'll see to that," Elizabeth assured him, and Patrick finished his drink.

* * *

Grégoire's collection of artwork was massive. Unlike the galleries at Pemberley, he simply put things up wherever they would fit and whatever the quality, often without proper frames. He had restored paintings of saints, wooden carvings, and mounds of his writing, published and unpublished, all wrapped in bundles.

"All words. Just words," he said to his brother, and took down a picture that hung over his wall. It looked like a copy of an ancient portrait of Saint Patrick, pointing to the right. "The saint led me to Caitlin. He was pointing to her."

Darcy raised an eyebrow but decided not to question his brother's sanity, at least not mid-grieving.

"Point the way," Grégoire whispered, running his hand over the painting.

"Do you want me to step over there so he's pointing my direction? Then will you accept my invitation to Pemberley?"

"I will accept," Grégoire said, a hint of a smile on his face, "but St. Patrick goes with me."

"You will not rest until you have loaded my home with saints."

"No. I suppose I will not."

* * *

Grégoire joined them at Pemberley a week after the funeral, soon enough to welcome back his niece and nephew from Japan, with their very expectant daughter. With no shortage of the terrible sin of pride and no shame in showing it, Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy welcomed their great-grandson into the world. Scott Foster would not inherit Pemberley, but he would hold a very special place in their hearts for the remainder of their days. The Fosters returned to their own home shortly after the birth, and Pemberley returned to a quiet normality, as much as could be achieved with four generations under one roof.

When Darcy was looking for his brother, he would go looking in Pemberley's chapel and find him there. At first there was some worry that Grégoire might be spiraling into a dangerous depression, but he calmly emerged every day after long hours of prayer. His heart was still heavy with grief, but soothed when Darcy allowed him to set up an altar of candles and a picture of St. Mary above them in the chapel corner. Every day he lit for those they had lost – an ever-growing collection of candles. Tending to the candles was an occupation that brought him some sense of finality.

"Their souls still burn bright, even when their bodies are gone," Grégoire said as his brother entered his room. "I thought that was Mr. Bingley's dog."

"We share," Darcy said. Knut sniffed his pockets very intentionally, and Darcy kneeled to properly scratch behind his ears. "Aren't you going to say that all of G-d's creatures are no man's property or some nonsense?"

"Not when you are so eager to say it for me," Grégoire said with a smile. "In the spring, they will send some priest to talk to me, probably from Dublin. I am much more likely to return with him because my son is there."

"After all you've been through – "

"Yes. After all G-d has given me, should I not give something back to G-d, if only for my remaining years?" His eye had a twinkle in it. "Or perhaps I can try the marriage market. I am still a wealthy man."

"That is not what I meant."

"If I return to the church, it will give my life purpose. Not to say it is without one at the moment, but there was a time when it was the only purpose I knew. There were so many happy times in the Mother Church, which is struggling so hard to administer to the needs of the Irish. I cannot ask my son to do it all through his legal crusading. There are the rights of a man and the soul of a man, both needing attention, both needing salvation."

Darcy shook his head. "You are already decided."

"I will wait the year and mourn my wife. Then I will take the tonsure again." He put his hand over the bald spot on his head, though he still had a beard and a good deal of hair circling his head. "If they find anything to cut."

* * *

True to his word – as if anything else were possible – the priests arrived in the spring, but Grégoire told them to return on a specific date. He returned to Ireland on the anniversary of his wife's death to mourn at her grave. The next day, he journeyed with his son and daughter-in-law to Dublin. He left all his mortal possessions to his son except for some ritual items his son did not need or want, which he left to the church, and some assorted items he left to the poor. Darcy, Elizabeth, and Georgiana surprised him at the cathedral in Dublin to see him assume the Roman collar as an ordinary priest, bound by chastity, charity, and obedience once again. Not long after that, he welcomed the birth of his granddaughter by performing the baptism himself.

Two years into his new profession, he restarted the family tradition of traveling to Pemberley in the summer to see the rest of his family, though he did not hurt his old body by walking when there were perfectly good trains and a steamship. He'd shaved his beard, which made him look a decade younger at least, but his hair was still gray and his face still withered by time.

"The needs of the souls of Ireland are many," he said. "The Archbishop has asked that I go to Rome, and take the cowl, and return as a Franciscan to start a school for the poor children of Dublin. Otherwise they will be condemned to the work houses."

Darcy looked to his wife with alarm, but not surprise. "Surely you do not need to be a monk to do that. You are already a priest."

"Ah, yes, but it would make my wardrobe so much simpler," he laughed, and took an extra sugar cube for his tea. "I gave him the condition that if I am to go to Rome, I may take whomever I wish with me." To their genuine shock he said, "Oh, don't worry. Once in a lifetime is enough for anyone, especially people of our distinguished age. I had someone else in mind."

* * *

Bishop Joseph Bennet, who owed his allegiance to the Queen of England and not the Bishop of Rome, was a happily-married man with a family. Though he administered his bishopric from another place, his summer home was Longbourn, and he spent considerable other time there, so his widowed mother Mary Bertrand would not be alone. When she passed before his forty-fifth birthday but after seeing two grandchildren, he made it a more permanent residence of his own, fixing it up as his and his wife's tastes dictated, which were far from ostentatious but more modern. Though he was in his other home most of the year, administrating and tending to his flock with his wife and children by his side, he enjoyed the retreat to Hertfordshire and welcomed any visitors, especially family. For that reason, Grégoire did not give notice, and decided to surprise him. His own needs were few, and he would be no bother for the time he was there.

"Father Bellamont," Joseph said, smiling to greet an old friend and very distant relative. Though their lives had taken them down different paths in different countries, they always stayed in touch.

"Your Excellency," Grégoire bowed, and they embraced as old friends.

"I do believe you are forbidden to call me that, Father."

"The same, Your Excellency."

Grégoire was welcomed to Longbourn once again. He'd seen the house in many stages over the years, but its initial charm was preserved despite renovations made for convenience. A picture of old Mr. Edmund Bennet, the former Mr. Bennet of Longbourn, hung on the wall in the dining room, over Joseph's head as they said grace.

"I was very sorry to hear about your mother," Grégoire said, not having been this south for many years.

"Thank you. And my condolences for your wife."

They retired alone to the study after dinner. Joseph had a small glass of brandy and Grégoire had a tiny bit of wine, saying any more would make him too sleepy and he would collapse in his chair and need to be carried to bed. At last he came to it. "I have been invited to Rome, to take the cowl as a Franciscan."

"A Franciscan? How many cowls have you taken now?"

"This will be my third. Cistercian, Benedictine, and now the Order of St. Francis. The Friars are a more independent group these days, and many are heads of schools in America and Ireland, so it is not all left to the Jesuits, who are strained."

"I know the wars on the Continent have cost the Church a great deal," Joseph said. "Will you be safe?"

"There is a treaty between the Papal States and Austria now. It will hold for some time, with G-d's help." Grégoire took a small sip of his wine, which was nearly all of it. "They said I may take whomever I wish. I want to invite you to come with me. I know you are a man of many responsibilities and a pleasure trip to Rome is not one of them, but I will have a private audience with the Holy Father. I do not know how many of those I will receive in this lifetime. So far I've only had one," he chuckled. "And he didn't say a word to me."

This gave Joseph considerable pause. His mother lived long enough to learn of his father's ascension to the throne of Saint Peter, something that caused the few members of the family who were informed endless amusement. "I do not wish to make it public."

"I would assume the same of him."

"I will have to travel incognito, I think. But I do owe you the favor of honoring your request to join you on this pilgrimage." He added, "He may not wish to see me."

Grégoire winked. "I have been told I can be very convincing when I set my mind to it."

... Next Chapter - The Second Audience


	56. The Second Audience

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

This is the last story in my series that began with "A Bit of Advice." At this point you should not be starting with this story, unless you really like a challenge. You should go to my profile page for links to the stories in order.

This chapter is the final chapter before section III, the final section of this story and the series. There are two endings, the official one and the alternate one, and I'll be posting them both.

_**HUGE AUTHOR NOTE:**_ Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in stores and on Amazon.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Chapter 12 – The Second Audience

1857

Rome was truly the Eternal City. As Father Grégoire Bellamont and Bishop Joseph Bennet approached it in 1857, it was experiencing yet another emergence from the ashes of nearly a century's worth of conflict. The French Revolutionary Government, then Napoleon, then the various Italian kings and revolutionaries that rose in the wake of Napoleon's fallen empire had ravaged it, even sending the Pope into a brief exile. He fled Rome in 1848 and did not return for two years, during which St. Peter's was sacked by members of the brief-lived Roman Republic. Order was restored with his return, the Papal States, though ever shrinking, remained solely under his authority. Pius IX was known as a great reformer, devoted to restoring the monastic and lay orders that were decimated by Napoleon's reforms. Even some English protestants celebrated him, with one converting to Catholicism under his guidance.

Grégoire was delighted to see the restoration of the physical splendor of Rome, with new statues for the saints and new entrances for pilgrims. He ran about as a young man from place to place, touching the cross his brother purchased for him fifty years before in the nearby market to the tombs of saints. Joseph watched with some bemusement, his curiosity occasionally overwhelming his naturally Spartan religious upbringing.

"There is holiness in beautifying a house of G-d," Grégoire said, adding, "though I understand we have been accused of taking it too far."

"I don't see my bishopric being sacked for its gold," Joseph said, good humor in his voice. "It is a far less appealing target for looters."

"A definite advantage."

They met with the Cardinal assigned to receive Grégoire and offered him and his guest shelter in his private residence during their stay. The Cardinal was a fan of Grégoire's works, and as they learned from others, specifically requested the honor. While Grégoire met with the head of the Franciscan order and other dignitaries, Joseph explored the ruins of ancient Rome. The old stone structures, still standing after two millennia and multiple sackings of the city, had a grandeur that so many homes and buildings in England tried to emulate. In his alma mater, Oxford, the Radcliffe library had Roman-esque columns done incorrectly, having been based on inaccurate drawings by a pilgrim who traveled to Rome.

Everywhere there were soldiers, off-duty or on, in different costumes or even just collections of an assortment of costumes. Some resembled real, modern uniforms and others some fanciful imagining of a holy army, but their guns were all real, even if they didn't necessarily have gunpowder.

It took a week to receive a private audience with the Holy Father. He had not made a public appearance since their arrival, so Joseph had not seen him except in etchings in newspapers. "He is just a man," Grégoire assured him. "The Vicar of Christ, yes, in the form of a man."

"And it would be Papist for me to believe the latter."

"So there is nothing to fear." Nonetheless he could tell Joseph was nervous. Who wouldn't be?

* * *

With Grégoire wearing his modest black vest and white Roman collar, and Joseph wearing his best suit but with no indication of his own priestly status, they were welcomed into the private residences of His Holiness Pope Pius IX. Swiss Guards at the door stood with unwieldy and ostentatious spears, symbolic now instead of particularly useful. They were not served anything, and Joseph was instructed to wait on a bench while Grégoire had his audience.

For the second time in his life, Grégoire Bellamont entered the presence of Giovanni Mastai. Instead of a young man standing in black robes he found an old man sitting in choir dress – a full-body white cassock fringed with fascia, a red mozzetta (hood) to indicate his Cardinal status, and red stole (scarf) with golden embroidery. His fine, round form was rather jolly, his white skullcap matching the color of his hair. He held out his hand, and Grégoire knelt before him to kiss the fisherman's ring. "Your Holiness."

"Father Bellamont." Unlike most of the people in Grégoire's usual Irish circle, he pronounced the French name correctly. "As news arrived of the troubles of the Irish See, your name came up quite often. I've read some of your work."

"I am honored, Your Holiness." With the Pope's indication, he stood. "I read some of your public letters when you were Bishop of Peru."

"You did?" The Pope laughed. "You have been following my career from an early point, it seems."

"Yes, Your Holiness."

They turned to the issues at hand – the state of the Irish church, the troubles with mass poverty and the increasingly brutal English rule, and the hints of revolt among the Catholic politicians in Ireland. His son a barrister to the Chief Justice, Grégoire could speak at length on the subject, but like the Pope, was more interested in reestablishing the clergy as a source of comfort to the people.

"They say there are more Catholics in Ireland than Italy," the Pope said with amusement. "Even after you have lost so many to the famine and immigration to America. But you are French, _non_?"

"_Oui_, by birth, and my mother was French. My father was English. My wife was Irish."

"A triumvirate," said the Pope. "I understand the Jesuits are very eager to have you, but you have refused them."

"Refused is a harsh world, Your Holiness. I do not think I would suit them."

"The Order of Saint Francis, then. The mad monk who preached to birds."

"I have been called mad many times in my lifetime, Your Holiness, though usually by my English relatives."

Despite the seriousness of his position, the Pope could still laugh. "I understand you would only take the cowl with my personal permission. You have it, as if you could have expected otherwise. You have some other purpose."

"Your Holiness, there is another reason I wished for this audience. A more personal matter."

"Am I acquainted with someone you know?"

"We are acquainted, Your Holiness. But when we last met, I was a young Cistercian traveling with his English brother and you were a Seminary student staying at your family's home in Italy. I do not think we said two words to each other, but it was a crucial meeting to everyone else present." At the Holy Father's confusion, he continued, "My brother Mr. Darcy was pursuing the interests of his wife's sister, Miss Bennet."

"Mary Bennet?" The name was not so far from his lips, however shocked he was. "How is she?"

"I am sorry to say she passed on a few years ago, Your Holiness."

"Before that ... she was well?"

"Happily married with many children. To a French Catholic, of all people, and a Royal Physician. But her first son, who has now inherited her father's estate, was a student of mine in his earliest years. Now he is a Bishop in the Church of England and I am proud of his accomplishments. Holy Father, I will join whichever Order you wish if you would only meet with him now."

"Now? He is here?"

"Yes, Your Holiness."

Indecision marred the Pope's round face. "He wishes to see me?"

"If only once in his life, yes."

"Call him."

Grégoire turned to the secretary. "Please call in Joseph Bennet."

"And leave us," the Pope said, gesturing for the servants to leave the room as his son entered. Grégoire stepped aside for Joseph to kneel as instructed, and kiss the Papal ring. As for address, words escaped him.

"You have your mother's eyes," the Holy Father said. "And some of my hair, I see." Joseph still had dark hair, though it was tinged with gray. The Pope, the holiest man alive, reached out to touch it like it was angel dust. "My son."

"Father."

Without permission, Grégoire exited the room, leaving father and son to be alone this one time.

* * *

Pius IX stood, and greeted his son as a man and not a king. "I remember your mother very well. She was the only woman I ever loved, and I suspect, aside from my mother, the only one who loved me. But I was young and my course was set, and I abandoned you. She wrote me when you were born."

"She told me," Joseph said, still trembling, not sure what to make of this man who so many revered but did not know as he did, even though he had known him for less than a minute. He was sure that their connection was deeper than to any of the men that surrounded the Pope. "She always wore the necklace with your face in the locket, even after she married Dr. Bertrand. She was buried with it."

"The man who raised you – he was good to you?"

"Yes. A very kind man, a physician, and very well educated. I met him through Father Grégoire, when Grégoire was his patient. I was learning Latin and he helped me with my homework. I liked him so much I told my mother to marry him. Or so she says. I don't remember it that well. I must have been seven or eight."

"And Father Bellamont also tutored you."

"Yes, when he visited Hertfordshire, where I lived with my grandfather. Even though I do not need a living, when I wanted to pursue a career in the Church – our Church – he supported me. I do not know if he mentioned that I am a bishop." He blushed. "I would say I take after my father but it is perhaps a bit heretical for both of us."

"Are you married?"

"Yes. I have two children, a boy and a girl."

The Pope was old, so they sat together instead of standing. "In the early church, priests married. It was forbidden because of simony, and because of the monastic influence on the church. This is our holy path, but I will not alter it, but nor will I condemn having grandchildren. Now tell me all about them."

* * *

An hour later, a misty-eyed Joseph left the private quarters of the Holy Father and rejoined his traveling companion. "You really are a saint."

"It seems to be bad luck when priests say that to me and good luck when family says it to me," Grégoire said. "For my own sake, I will consider you the latter."

Joseph was the only layman present (as far as anyone knew) when Grégoire took the cowl for the third and final time as Franciscan monk. His hair trimmed, his beard shaved, and in robes again, he said, "I believe my life has circled."

He gave letters for Joseph to deliver to England before returning to his new brotherhood. Father Grégoire of the Brotherhood of Saint Francis would remain in a monastery for six months before returning to Ireland to open a school in Dublin. He wrote often, amazed at the speed of the mail 'these days,' and kept his family updated on his status. After being gone almost a year, he returned to Ireland, where a merry party was waiting in Belfast to greet him before he continued on to the work that would consume the remainder of his life.

"And the Pope?" Darcy said, in privacy with Grégoire and Elizabeth. "How did you find him?"

"Older than I remember. Much the same way he found me. And once again, suitably humbled by the person I brought with me."

... Next Up - Section III


	57. Dr Daniel Maddox

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

We've reached the final segment, which is six chapters long, followed by an alternate ending. Warning: this chapters are sad, but inevitable. I hope you've enjoyed the story until this point, and will follow me to the very end of our series.

Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in stores and on Amazon. If you buy it or review it (if you have a place to review books), it would really help me out while Sourcebooks debates buying book 4. I know it's shameless to ask, but I'm still asking.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Section III

Dr. Daniel Maddox

Since his days as a very small child, Daniel Maddox developed a keen eye for the world around him. His world in London was very small, but to him it was filled with enough curiosities that he never saw a reason to ever be elsewhere. There was enough to entertain him. His father was a stern, strict man most of time, but not unkind, and could be indulgent. If Danny finished all his studies on time (which he always did), his father would let him come on his many errands. Most of them involved meetings with solicitors and bankers. They were boring men themselves, but they had objects in their office he did not have at home. The oldest of them would let him wear his spectacles, and he saw ants up close for the first time on the steps outside the office. On the way home, the route they took had beggars of all shapes and colors, some putting on amusing shows to earn their coin. He saw a street magician make his Christmas money disappear by a flick of his wrists, and was so happy at the trick he was more understanding of the act than his father, who insisted they were robbed.

When his father died, he became Brian's responsibility, a condition that seemed impossible until the moment it became a reality. Brian was fun, and his father was not. Brian was a young man, and his father was an old man. Brian did not look happy with the arrangement, but he always smiled and reassured Danny when he was frightened.

When his sight began to fade, Daniel was terrified. He imagined himself one of the blind beggars, shaking their tin cup for scraps. Those were the only blind men he knew. The glasses saved him, though they would only work for a time. It was the doctor's inspections that interested him more. Most doctors just looked at him and asked Brian the questions, but the specialist looked in his eyes with a device, and actually touched him to do so. He said it made him very disreputable, but he was laughing when he said it.

Though the decision to study medicine was already on his mind, the cataract surgery and infection that almost killed him solidified it. It was not the desire to escape death as much as the desire to explore; and no one used their hands for more interesting and important things than surgeons. In University Daniel attempted to expand his other senses with opium, but those discoveries proved illusory and the withdrawal made him all too aware of every part of his body as it screamed at him. He decided to use the more conventional methods of exploring the universe and traveled in his final years of school, studying at the Academy in Paris, and discovering what the opposite sex could offer him in Italy instead of attending the lecture series there.

His second trip to Europe would be to explore Vienna with his wife, Caroline Bingley, and what stood between the two trips were the worst years of his life. He was never homeless thanks to his brother's sole stroke of inspiration, to pay the rent in an apartment years ahead, but beyond that he had only the books they snuck out of their home before it was repossessed, all he had was a single set of surgical tools and his own hands, and they failed him only during the cholera outbreak, and even then he miraculously survived, with the help of his friend Simon. He was a good doctor and a good surgeon, no matter how few jobs the Royal Academy of Physicians would grant him. He saw more of London than he'd ever seen (or wished to see) by making night calls and day calls and dusk calls, anything that would pay for anyone and anywhere. It even put him in a house with royalty, even if that house was a brothel.

Maybe it was his calm observational skills that made him recognize Caroline Bingley for what she could be – a good wife whom he could faithfully love for the rest of his days. Her relatives and friends seemed amazed at his infatuation, not for any societal reason but because of her deceptively abrasive personality. She was cruel and devious for the same reason he was desperate and poor – because life forced them into corners where their actions were formed by self-preservation. Once removed from that threatening environment, the same inherent goodness so obvious in her brother emerged, at least for him. She was beautiful, intelligent, witty, and she loved him. He could ask for nothing more. He only regretted that he lacked the financial resources to give her everything she desired, a situation soon remedied by the Prince of Wales. When she asked for the impossible, to adopt a whore's orphaned child, he did not hesitate, nor did she ever give him cause to regret his decision.

Even if she had not given him a son of his own blood, Frederick would have been more than suitable. Though somewhat reluctant to use his powers for good and not evil, Frederick was as stunningly brilliant as his natural father had been before dissolving his brain with alcohol and laudanum. The chief difference between the Prince Regent and his son was that Frederick _listened_ to him. Frederick was a good brother to his sister, for the most part an obedient son, and very caring to Daniel Junior when he lost his sight.

As for his own condition, Dr. Maddox tried to count his blessings. He saw Emily be presented at court, a rite of passage some fathers found tedious and expensive, but was one of the highlights of his life. It was how he would always remember her, long after his sight dimmed and then darkened entirely.

Despite his childhood fears, his blindness did not spell the end of his career. Yes, he no longer practiced medicine, but he still lectured at Cambridge on occasion and attended other professors' lectures. They showed him the new inventions, or at least let him inspect them. He had four senses intact, even heightened, and most of the time, it made up for the other one.

His world, larger than he ever imagined as a child from the north of Britain to the wilds of Austria, began to shrink. Though the train made travel easier, he had less places to go. His children came to him at Chesterton or he went to Kirkland. They brought his grandchildren, too, not leaving him wanting. Frederick stayed mostly in Town, but Danny traveled extensively after regaining his vision, and did not officially buy a house until his wife was well into her final term and agreed to settle down. Even then, they were often on the move, but always stopping by.

Though his health remained remarkable, in the spring of 1852 he inquired after one of his greatest prides, Dr. George Wickham, who studied so long under him at Cambridge and became so successful. George was a talented doctor, particularly skilled in the mind and working with children, though he was still an accomplished surgeon as well. Dr. Maddox revealed to him what he had successfully hidden from his children and almost successfully hidden from his wife, the pounding headaches that descended so rapidly without reason and lasted for hours. It was in the bath that he found a lump on his head, and consented for George to pierce it.

"A tumor is pressing down on your skull," George said, his voice deeply unhappy. "I am afraid to excise it. It is too close to your eyes and I don't know how deep it goes."

"I don't use my eyes, George." He had already guessed the diagnosis, but saw no reason not to have it confirmed. If he didn't, he would never hear the end of it from Caroline.

"All the same."

No, he had no desire to die of infection. "Can you at least try to give me some relief?" There was more desperation in his voice than he wished.

"Would you consent to an audience? There are students with so little experience – "

"Of that I am aware, Dr. Wickham. It is always the case. Of course I consent."

The following week, before Caroline had much of a chance to work herself up, Dr. Maddox discovered the joy of the new anesthesia and slept through his surgery. That did not relieve the pain of the injury to his head, nor could he see the tumor they removed, but he had them describe it to him.

"That was not all of it," George said. "I will not play with your life, but you should feel better." For a time, of course, assuming it grew back, or was only masking something else.

And he did have his relief, but so did the opium he indulged in with his brother during Brian's final days. Brian preferred to smoke it with his Indian pipe, and for a few hours free from the pain in his back that followed him to the end of his life. After his death, Dr. Maddox put the poppy away and consented to another surgery. There would be two more to take the pressure off his brain, but it was an exercise in futility.

When he was going blind, he used to sit out in the sun, watching it fall. Now that he was blind, he sat out in the sun again, feeling the warmth of the rays on his skin as a pleasing balance to the pain in his skull. Caroline sat with him, and read to him, though most often they both simply dozed off.

He woke to the feeling of the sun, still high in the sky, warming his cold insides. "Caroline." He nudged her, but she was still asleep. "Caroline, look." But he did not have the heart to wake her.

It was the most beautiful sunset he had ever seen. It cast a glow over the sky, not just of oranges but blues, reds, and purples in the distant cloud bank. He stood and approached it, as if a few feet would help him reach and touch the beauty that was beyond anything art could replicate or life could offer him.

He was going to call for Caroline again, but he looked back, and she was still asleep on the bench, him beside her. She was the same beautiful woman he married, not the old woman she claimed to be. She was happy where she was and he would not disturb her.

He turned, and following his brother's voice, walked off to explore the sunset.

... To Be Continued


	58. Fitzwilliam Darcy

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

We've reached the final segment, which is six chapters long, followed by an alternate ending. Warning: this chapters are sad, but inevitable. I hope you've enjoyed the story until this point, and will follow me to the very end of our series.

Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in stores and on Amazon. If you buy it or review it (if you have a place to review books), it would really help me out while Sourcebooks debates buying book 4. I know it's shameless to ask, but I'm still asking.

_In other news_, I've posted some ideas I didn't use for the series in the story 11 section of my forums. It's not behind a lock, so you don't even have to register.

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Section III

Fitzwilliam Darcy

The sun, it seemed, was growing especially bright for Darcy. George told him it was because his eyes were more sensitive, and tinted glasses solved that problem when he remembered to wear them. Elizabeth took great pleasure in reminding him, the smile on her face mocking in a way he would only accept from her. Yes, he was an old man, and he was allowed to be a little forgetful.

The mere fact that he accepted that as part of his life was stunning when he stepped back for perspective. His whole life had been one of a perfectionist, even if such a thing had not always been achieved. Every last detail was seen to, in both his houses, at Pemberley and in Town. He let no one make decisions for him, though he let Elizabeth _suggest_ to the point where it might seem to a distant observer that she was making the decision, but again, that was all a matter of perspective. His children's lives were carefully planned. They didn't go according to plan, but there were plans. Some of them were written. It was a shame that no one could read his handwriting.

At three and twenty, he was a father to Georgiana and the master of Pemberley. Both were positions he was thrust into by his father's death, and he accepted the responsibility gracefully, the weight on his shoulders settled until he felt it no longer. He could not imagine his life without it. That was perhaps why he was so reluctant to hand over any affairs to Geoffrey, even when his son was a great deal older than three and twenty. Geoffrey seemed to think it would ease his father's mind to have less responsibilities, when the very idea threatened a sort of panic inside Darcy. This was _his_ responsibility; what would he do without it? So he let them have the little jobs, the ones they didn't like, but he maintained control. Though he was no architectural dandy, he preferred the house to be in perfect order, kept current but keeping to tradition, and for maximum comfort for its occupants. The gardens needed quite a bit of overseeing, and it gave him time outdoors now that he was unsteady on a horse and his vision over distance was too weak to hunt. He no longer collected rents from his tenants, but when he did check in on them from time to time, they greeted him with great delight (and some significant surprise). They no doubt imagined him in the secret rooms of Pemberley, counting his money by the fire, or the younger ones did, and he would prove them otherwise if he could manage it. He went with his son, of course, and sometimes one of his grandsons.

All of his daughters were gone now, to their households with their husbands. Cassandra had been particularly painful to part with in a bittersweet way. She spent many years recovering from the incident with Mr. Hyde, so much that it was a relief to see her happily married, but the pain of separation was not too much lessoned. Elizabeth's tears of joy at the wedding helped a great deal. Anne visited often, and Sarah lived near the rectory and was never far. Still, they were not to be replaced by grandchildren; grandchildren existed in _addition_ to them. Geoffrey's children he had the pleasure of watching grow up as he had his own. Of the boys, the youngest, Colin, was the most sensible, but that was holding to Darcy's very high standards. Fortunately the world was not what it was when he was a boy, and offered so many opportunities to any man with a good head on his shoulders and a solid education. William would inherit, and after some wild bachelor days he seemed to be settling down, at least in appearance. The middle one, Brian, was his secret greatest concern, as he was unnaturally shy, hiding away in his books or with some other distraction that did not involve people outside the family. Still, he was not mad. He was not even odd enough to be considered _touched_, a word that brought more connotations than it deserved. Georgiana had seven children. It was a great relief that almost all of them seemed to have missed the lottery of mental infirmary in the Darcy line, and not caught any of Georgiana's. When Darcy said that, Elizabeth had some sharp words for him, but he expected no less from her.

Geoffrey exceeded all of his expectations, and in her own right, Georgiana Bingley did, too. She would be a wonderful mistress of Pemberley, a good compliment to her husband and a proud mother. Her daughters she did not immediately lead astray; she seemed content to be the odd duck (or wolf) in the family and have it remain that way. She did not have all seven children out in the backyard, learning how to fight like Chinamen. That she reserved for the American boy who visited every few years. His father was a diplomat or some such thing. Now if she would only wear her hair properly, everything would be right in Darcy's book.

Bingley was in a similar position to him, having sold most of his interest in the business to Edmund. Edmund and Julia Bingley lived in Town and at Kirkland, leaving Bingley more time for whatever peaked his bizarre fancy that week. Jane spent less time running the household and more time with her children and grandchildren, especially when her son Charles was visiting from France, igniting new speculation about the wayward son of Kirkland and whether he would challenge his brother over the inheritance when their father died. They neither fed nor attempted to quash the rumors, so long as they were far enough from the truth, and eventually village conversation turned elsewhere.

With his sister Georgiana now retired to Pemberley after the death of her husband, Darcy had everyone right where he wanted – except for Grégoire. One little bugger had to escape him, and Grégoire was obedient to no one but himself and the Bishop of Rome, and the latter he could blackmail if he wanted to. Father Grégoire ran a school in Dublin that kept him very busy. There was one other Franciscan monk and two nuns sent to assist him in the school and in his personal affairs, but he remained fairly mobile, and in good health. He was closer to his son, so active in the Irish legal system, and it suited him. Darcy did not complain so long as he visited, which he did. In fact, the sight of a little monk walking up the hill to Pemberley made Darcy feel positively young again.

Grégoire was in Ireland this particular sunny morning, when Darcy remembered his glasses, holding them up proudly before Elizabeth could open her mouth. "Of course, dear," she said, and kissed him on the cheek. Not a bad start.

Bingley was sitting in the usual place, wearing a wide straw hat to shield his sensitive skin from the sun. "Darcy."

"Bingley." Bingley did not bother rising to greet him and he was not offended. He understood the pain of getting up unnecessarily. Instead he just sat, and settled in for the day. Knut, who had followed him from Pemberley as he did every day, laid down to roll around on the grass. There was nothing to block their view. The path was still dirt, and the road far off, and on occasion they would see a wagon pass by, too distant for either of them to hear any of it.

"Do you want a chocolate? They're from Paris and they're very good."

Darcy waved his hand at the offered packaging, ignoring what was inside it. "I do not find myself very hungry today."

"My dentist says I should stay away from these things. I don't know why; he only makes money when I visit him with a sore tooth."

"Clearly he has your best interests at heart. You'd better not feed that to the dog, for he has no dentist."

"Yes, what would he do?" Bingley petted Knut, but held the bag away from the hound's curious nose. "No, not for you. It'll make you sick. Like the berries that you ate in my greenhouse."

"You left them well within his reach."

"I will not hound-proof my greenhouse."

"Then you will have to teach him some obedience."

"Odd. I thought I would just leave that to you and expect it to be taken care of."

"You do take me for granted, then. Now you have paid the price." Darcy shifted his back against the bench.

"What is it?"

"A sore back. A reward for years of using it." Unable to find a comfortable spot, he stood, leaning on his cane. Now in the shade, he removed his glasses.

"Darcy." Bingley's voice didn't catch him at first. "Darcy!"

"What?" He was distracted.

"Your eyes. They're positively ghoulish. What have you done to them?"

Darcy looked down at the glasses, expecting the tinted glass to yield some answers. "What the devil do you mean?"

"They're yellow. Even the whites of the eyes."

"I am not possessed, so you may stop looking at me as such."

"Darcy, I am very serious."

He sighed, and looked down at Knut, whose own black eyes were screaming for attention. "Well, then." He could hear Dr. Maddox's voice in his ears. "Walk with me back to Pemberley? I have a letter to write."

"Are you speaking to me or the dog?"

"Is there a difference?" And he took off, letting Bingley say whatever he wanted to say, cursing him in his Hindoo language, without complaint the whole way back. He'd grown used to the rhythmic sound of it, even if he didn't know what language it was or understand a word. When he reached the house, he ignored the servants' offers of their various services and went to the study. He found his son there, behind his desk. "I require a few minutes to draft a letter."

Geoffrey looked up at him. "Are you all right?"

"Are my eyes yellow or is Bingley finally mad?"

"I am sorry to disappoint you, Father, but Bingley is quite sane in this particular regard. Do – "

"You might as well get a doctor. Get George. I know he's in London, but they have such wondrous new methods of travel." He took the offered seat at the desk – his desk. Sitting at it gave him as much comfort as the physical world could offer him, and picked up his pen. "And no interruptions."

Half an hour later, he rang for the servant to heat the wax. His arm was shaking as he affixed his seal on it, but the servant was not the only one who entered. "Darcy."

His wife's voice was the only one he was inclined to tolerate until he was sitting again, and in something more comfortable than a chair. It appeared as though he was shaking her arm, but he was really leaning on her, the cane not providing enough stability. "Walk with me. Yes, I know, I told Geoffrey to call George."

"He won't be here until tomorrow. You know that."

He gestured for the servants and concerned family members to shoo, and proceeded down the great hall, past all of the portraits of the Darcys who came before him. "Dr. Maddox once told me – a great many years ago, it would be now – that Wickham had permanently injured my kidney, and if it were to ever fail, the first sign would be a yellowing of my eyes, and eventually skin. So it seems, Wickham killed me after all, but allowed me the reprieve of a lifetime."

"No. Darcy, it could be – "

"It is not. George will confirm it." They rounded the hallway, and he looked at his butler. "Please send that letter to my brother in Dublin, express."

"Yes, Mr. Darcy."

The pain of climbing the stairs was enough to take any words of comfort he might have offered Elizabeth out of his mouth, but he would not be carried. He was Mr. Darcy of Pemberley and Derbyshire and never in his adult life had anyone carried him, and he intended to keep it that way.

Even the most curious of his grandchildren would not dare to enter the master bedchambers without permission. He was alone with Elizabeth and his manservant, who helped him remove his jacket and vest, and the more hampering parts of his clothing. He had more freedom to move, something he was the least inclined to do. As far as he was concerned, not moving another inch for the rest of his life would be quite pleasant.

"I'm going to have Geoffrey get the doctor from town. And the surgeon."

"I know." He was settled on the bed now, and though not moving brought less strain to his body, the pain in his back had not lessoned. "It ought to be confirmed, but I do wish to see George again."

She kissed him and left, and he closed his eyes, but the pain kept him awake, no matter how exhausted he was.

"Uncle Darcy?"

He opened his eyes. "Hello, Georgiana."

"Geoffrey's gone to Lambton. But I suppose you know that."

"Yes."

She took his hand, her expression collapsing into tears. "Aren't you going to fight?"

"I fought it once and won," he said. "I was much younger and stronger. I had so much responsibility that I could not have imagined doing otherwise. But when you cheat the Grim Reaper, he will eventually return to claim his prize."

"I know, Uncle Darcy." Her voice cracked and he raised his hand to stroke her cheek. "You cannot leave Aunt Darcy all alone!"

"I will not demand that she join me."

Perhaps there was one person who would enter when the door was shut, and that was the other Georgiana Darcy. "Brother!"

Sensing she was interrupting something, the younger Georgie curtseyed to Lady Kincaid and left as Georgiana rushed to the bed. "Georgiana." He nodded and let her embrace him, wincing as she did so.

So began the parade of visitors, as if he were some great, dead king and they came to pay tribute to his enshrined casket. Even when he wanted to, he could not rest because there were too many people who wanted to see him, and could not fathom the ache that was draining away all of his strength. He even let Brian Darcy's monkey up on his bed, not admonishing him for not having better control over his pet.

Knut remained by his side. "Well, King, you think they could have at least waited until I was dead for the procession." He had lapsed into calling the dog 'King' like his childhood dog, but the hound never seemed to mind.

"Darcy," Elizabeth insisted, appearing to him not crying for the first time since she escorted him to his room. "You must eat."

He looked towards the window, and saw the retreating light. No wonder his stomach growled at the tray of food set before him. She seemed shocked when he did not need any other enticement, though he only finished the soup and most of the bread, unable to touch the roast. He was already full.

"Bingley won't return to Kirkland without speaking to you."

"And Jane?"

"She is staying tonight."

"Offer him the same, though I suppose that won't get him out of my hair." He had every intention of surviving the night, as agonizing as it would no doubt be. He did receive Bingley, whom Knut was very excited to see, and the dog received some table scraps from him.

"I'm sure the doctor has had to answer the question many times, and still he does not know the answer," Bingley said, sitting down on the bed. "He says you may not survive the night."

"I trust doctors, but only very specific ones. One is gone and the other is in Town. Make of that what you will."

"You're either waiting to see George or Grégoire."

"Both, actually. And I do wish they would hurry it up."

"Would you wait for me?"

"I've never had to. You seem to follow me like a shadow." Darcy looked up, at Bingley's bloodshot eyes. "I am not one to tallow in empty phrases, Bingley, and cannot find it in me to wax long about what our friendship has meant to me. I hope you will find that statement satisfactory unto itself."

"Yes," Bingley said. "Very much so."

Finally all his guests left him, his son agreed to stop checking on him for a few hours. Elizabeth could stop playing host, which he knew she was doing despite his protests to let Georgiana cover her, and join him in bed, freed of her heavy skirt. If his body could provide her some comfort, he was happy to grant it.

"Now with so few hours, I cannot be speechless," Elizabeth whispered, clutching his robe, "and yet, there is nothing I can say to express myself fully."

"You have had a lifetime of practice."

"Should I not be comforting you, and not the other way around?" She picked her head up. "Do you truly believe this is your penance for Wickham's death? Because if so, I would cast you in a worse light than your brother, who never actively accepted his death as punishment for his sins."

So she guessed it. "Your powers of speech have not failed you. You are still the observant woman I married, and it has haunted me ever since."

"Darcy! I thought my conversation haunted you long before our marriage."

"Ah, now it is my memory that is faulty."

"Yes, because you have not answered the question."

He sighed, and repositioned his arms so they were slightly more around her. "I do not know if this is my fate because of my injuries, or a mere coincidence. Considering the rarity of my illness, I am inclined to suspect the former. My death will even the score, but in terms of an eye for an eye, you could say I avoided Wickham's vengeance rather skillfully and for many more years than I might have deserved. You will have to settle for a guilt-ridden man who lived a happy life to a ripe old age for a husband, and now upon reaching the hour of his so-called penance, is still reluctant to serve it for fear of leaving you." His hands cupped her cheeks, and he squinted in the candlelight. "Your eyes still sparkle for me."

"Of course." They were also reflecting a bit more of the light before tears were forming. "Do not leave me."

"Not now, I promise you. Not this hour. Beyond that, you cannot ask much of me that I can guarantee, and I will not promise you something I cannot guarantee."

With that, they fell asleep together, and stayed that way until the light of dawn.

* * *

George Wickham arrived in the early morning, before the house was awake, looking ready to collapse himself. "Uncle Darcy. Aunt Darcy." He bowed, not waking them, but interrupting their privacy. If he had slept at all, it was in his clothes. "I came as soon as I could."

"Quite obviously," Darcy said. "Thank you, George." He looked at George's bag. "You must suspect I was not truly seeking your medical advice."

"No." He bowed again to Elizabeth, who kissed him on the cheek and left to dress for the day. "Who told you about the eyes?"

"Dr. Maddox, of course. He warned me many years ago, when I recovered from the inflammation caused by Wickham's wounds." He understood George's expression. "I would sugar-coat it for you, and say it was from some other injury, for they have been numerous over the years, but you deserve the truth. And I am not hard-hearted. I am grateful it took this long."

For his own satisfaction more than Darcy's, George did listen to his heartbeat, shine light into his eyes and mouth, and checked his skin. He did not make a different pronouncement than the one Darcy knew. "Do you want something for the pain?"

"Will it affect my mind?"

"It may."

"I will not leave this world muddle-headed."

George smiled. "I am not surprised. Nonetheless the offer remains."

"Thank you, George."

Darcy's daughters arrived from their different places, as did a seemingly endless parade of grandchildren and two great grandchildren, nieces and nephews and their children, to the point where he was not quite sure of all of their names, but thankfully was not asked them. This world of people did not exist when he was a young man, and through various machinations and marriages, it came to be. He could not fathom it. In a way, the appearance of an old, tonsured monk was easier for him to understand. "Hello, Brother."

"Hello, Brother. Father. Grégoire." Darcy cleared his throat, always dry no matter how much he drank, and he was less and less inclined to expend the energy to drink. "I wrote my confession not knowing if I would have the strength to say it when you arrived, or if you would at all. I suppose it ought to be spoken, but forgive me if I request the easy way."

Grégoire had the letter in his hands. "Yes, of course. You are already forgiven for most of these sins, Darcy. You were forgiven long ago."

"They are a good reminder then, of G-d's forgiveness," he said. "You can use that in a sermon if you like."

"I may." Grégoire smiled, and held his hand. "Within my limited powers of a Roman priest in Protestant England, I would grant you forgiveness for all your sins."

"You will not let the Vicar know it eases my mind. He is my son-in-law."

"I won't bring it up," Grégoire assured him.

He talked to Grégoire for a little while, but the conversation was not an easy one to follow. He called for Elizabeth, who was on the other side of the door, of course, and no one else.

Darcy took his signet ring, worn from so many years of playing with it, off his finger and set it on the bed stand. "So he does not have to pry it off my hand."

Elizabeth just nodded. He suspected she had words, but feared opening her mouth would just begin the sobbing. He waited for her to recover. Waiting was really all he could do. "Do you wish me to call George?"

"No." There was no need. If all he could see was the darkening room now, he would be further limited by the opium. No, he did not need further relief.

"You made me promise," Elizabeth whispered, stroking his cheek. "Do you remember?"

He was ashamed to say it. "No."

"When you were in prison in Austria, Dr. Maddox told me you said you wanted your last words to be 'I love Elizabeth.'"

"That does ... sound like me. Did I know ... whether you were in the room?"

"You were a bit incoherent in Austria."

"Then, accept this instead." He brought her hand to his face, and kissed her palm. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

There were no more words. He was not capable of any, nor did he hear the words from Elizabeth's lips when she spoke to his sister, to his brother, and to his son, who accepted the signet ring from her and with a saddened determination, put it on. For the first time since he heard his death knell sounding in the grove last morning, without pain or weakness, Darcy watched his family, and smiled.

... To Be Continued


	59. Caroline Maddox

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

We've reached the final segment, which is six chapters long, followed by an alternate ending. Warning: this chapters are sad, but inevitable. I hope you've enjoyed the story until this point, and will follow me to the very end of our series.

Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in stores and on Amazon.

_In other news_, I've posted some ideas I didn't use for the series in the story 11 section of my forums. It's not behind a lock, so you don't even have to register.

laughingman . web . aplus. net / phpbb/ index . php (delete the spaces)

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Caroline Maddox

Caroline Maddox looked terrible in black.

It was a silly, fruitless, shallow thing to think, but nonetheless when she caught herself in the mirror, the thought entered her mind and would not leave until she turned her nose up in indignation. Had there still been any orange left in her hair, it would have been worse. There was some consolation in that.

It was vanity, pure and simple, and Daniel loved her for it, not in spite of it. She knew too many husbands who made depreciating remarks about their wives, even with the said person present, to know how blessed she was in her marriage. He was a good, honest man who couldn't find his way around his haberdashers, who needed his manservant, his tailor, and her careful eye to be dressed properly in anything other than black (which he did look exceptionally good in), and he was more than happy to let her offer her advice, a puppy dog look in his eyes. The glasses made him only more hapless and therefore more adorable. More importantly, he _listened_ to her, not just because he might be required to reply or he was paying her some societal attention, but because he wanted to know her opinion. He valued it. She was not accustomed to the sensation. When they first started speaking together in the hallway at her brother's townhouse while Mr. Hurst soaked his foot, she could not at first identify the warm glow she felt when he responded positively to her opinions. Louisa did, too, but because they were sisters, and of the same opinion so often anyway, but he was a stranger and a man, and he was Mr. Hurst's doctor and nothing in his job description required him to pay her any heed. To be judged solely on one's own merits, and not found wanting, was a truly ecstatic experience. She wanted to feel that way for the rest of her life. He seemed enthusiastic about providing her with that opportunity.

Within a few years she had everything she could desire, all provided by him: wealth, status in society, and two adorable children, one of whom was good enough to take after her mother in her looks, and a brother who would hopefully not take after his natural father in his looks, though rumor had it the Prince of Wales had been a tad on the dashing side before he was fat. Everything dissolved when Daniel disappeared in Austria. She would have everything he left her, and her children would care for her as she grew older, but she didn't have _him_. Though she knew many merry widows, she was not prepared to be one, and took the earliest opportunity to go looking for him herself. Louisa and Charles tried to talk her out of it: what could she, a simple woman, do in the face of Austrian nobility and Napoleon's armies marching across Europe? But if the former Eliza Bennet would go, surely she could. They had not so much a common goal (that was years before and Elizabeth won) but a mutual one, and their escort, Lord Matlock, barely kept pace. The incoherent, badly injured Daniel Maddox she found in Transylvania was better than none at all. His maniac brother she could do without, but Daniel was devoted to Brian and all of his quirks, and Brian had a single stroke of good fortune in his life: he found a wife far more sensible than him.

She was foreign without the European sophistication of the French, she was Catholic, and she never made an attempt to insert herself into the haute Ton, but Princess Nadezhda had a stern charm and utter devotion to her wifely duties – all of which seemed to be involved with keeping her husband in line – that made her unique. She accepted Caroline as a sister-in-law with no preconditions, not looking down at her as a common daughter of a merchant or up at her as some society queen. And whatever it was she made for dinner, she was a very good cook.

Caroline was grateful she did not endure Nadezhda's pain. Not that of having a husband like Brian, who could be charming in a way her husband could not but was downright irresponsible and dangerous, but of being unable to bear children. Brian was not phased. Caroline, who had looked to the matter with some discomfort as an unmarried woman, could not imagine her life without her children, and she knew Nadezhda was even more desperate to have her own. Though they spoke of many things, they never spoke of it openly, of the gap between the two women that could not be bridged. Louisa was childless, but Louisa was an altogether different person. The advantage was to Caroline, who knew how to speak to them both.

The women who filled her world were in fact very different from the friends she imagined having as a little girl growing up in her old house outside of London, dreaming of balls and soirees. Jane Bingley was as honest and kind as the day she met her, and it extended to the very depths of her soul to deal with the children she had. Yes, Caroline loved her nephews: the sodomite and the divorcee. She would say that the Bingley women had some sense, and smile at Eliza Bingley, but Georgiana Bingley was simply ... a trial for Jane, no doubt, and now a trial for the Darcys. She blamed her brother, of course, and his obsession with the East, but the girl was as good at avoiding being discovered as the cause of a disaster as she was at starting it.

Then there was the Elizabeth Darcy, the last person she would have expected to be her friend and confidant, and the second person to embrace her during Daniel's funeral after Jane. Nadezhda was there, too. Caroline had not expected her to stay so long after Brian's death. She must have felt something was keeping her here, even though everyone was perfectly understanding when she returned, alone, to her homeland. It was not an abandonment of her English family. It was an acknowledgment of her ties to her homeland, which deserved a final mention in her life. She left not long after returning from Japan to bury her friend Mugen. With Dr. Maddox gone, one of her last ties was now cut. She wrote, on occasion, of her travels in her homeland (she was so fond of traveling) and the troubles there, and she sent Caroline's grandchildren small wooden toys on their birthdays.

Caroline let Frederick assume his position as head of the Chesterton estate. He was not eager for it, but it was his right as far as English law knew, and his children would fill it with laughter again. Having no desire to reign dowager widow over her old home, she retired to Kirkland to be with her remaining sibling and his wife. Even in his old age, Charles always had some ridiculous project, even if he let his sons and grandson do the heavy lifting. In this case it was the greenhouse, filled with exotic flowers and plants that were pretty to look at but had a tendency to make her sneeze. She supposed all would not be right in the world if she wasn't rolling her eyes at her brother's behavior. And their hair still matched; they were both gray now, almost white. Charles walked with a cane. It was one of those ridiculously garish Indian things that didn't match any of his outfits, but she expected nothing less of him. He seemed determined to make her life interesting.

She got to see a little more of Charles' older son and namesake, who was in Kirkland far less rarely than _his_ nephew and namesake. There was never any open discussion about what Charles III was actively _doing_ in France, of course, but he was exceptionally well-versed on the Parisian social scene, particularly the theater, and despite almost a century of Revolution, Paris still ruled the fashion world, so she passed hours with him on these topics as no newspaper or magazine could afford her. He was there to catch her the day she nearly fell, and only his soft tones could convince her to use a cane, as he could not always be there for her.

Her nephew stayed longer, in fact, as she began to slow down. Accustomed to it as a product of age, she was not aware of how quickly it descended on her without the outside opinion of someone younger and healthy, despite his mental condition. Her brother, of course, insisted on a doctor.

"I'm _old_, Charles," she said. "Do you expect me to be racing carriages in Cambridge?"

"You will at least see George."

"He can come to see me, if he likes. I will not stop him."

Her brother frowned and accepted this as an answer.

By the time Dr. Wickham arrived, which was a week later because of her insistence of how unimportant her long-lost running abilities were, she was bedridden. He had all kinds of instruments Daniel would have given at least two of his remaining fingers for. He could listen to her heart with tubes that went from his ears to a disc on her chest. A scientific marvel he was, but Daniel was not here to appreciate it. He also asked a lot of questions that had he been in any other profession would have earned him a smack in the very least, even though he was a nephew, and she was still tempted to do it even with his prestigious license.

"I'm dying," Caroline pronounced, though saying it had a lot more gravity than thinking it. "You don't have to tell me where."

His little grin was uncomfortable. "Good, because I cannot tell you if you're not in pain."

"Is that not preferable?"

"If I had a diagnosis, I could treat you."

"Unless you have an elixir from the Fountain of Youth, you cannot. And only by my brother believes in such nonsense. When his time comes, you can remind him of that."

How she knew, she could not explain. It was innate. George offered any one of a dozen illnesses that could be festering inside her, weakening her system, but it was for family to hear, not her. She had a bit more dignity than to die of something ugly-sounding. "Come up with something more fashionable and I will accept your diagnosis and promptly die of that instead."

It made her brother smile, which was good to see. He did it so rarely these past few days. As she weakened, George's pronouncements became entirely irrelevant to her, and increasingly difficult to hear.

"Drink this," her son urged. Danny Maddox was found with his wife and son in the wilds of Scotland quickly enough to race to Derbyshire. If not for his red hair, he would have been the spitting image of his father, though he wore different frames on his glasses, and a bit more color in his outfits.

"Is it good or is it medicine?"

"There is the possibility of both."

She looked up at her daughter, also present, who just nodded, and Caroline drank. It was not so foul, but the aftertaste was. "Tea! With a sugar cube. I suppose my teeth don't matter much now, though I would like to die with some of them."

It was Frederick who supplied her with her request, and the warmth of it burned inside her, telling her how cold her body must be, even though it was summer and she was covered in blankets.

"Hot liquids were bad for women when I was a little girl," she said. "I am glad that nonsense has gone out of fashion. I wouldn't want to be the old widow doing something downright scandalous."

But Dr. Daniel Maddox wouldn't think that, either of her widowhood or medical fashion. He had no patience for the old women who gave him their own medicinal proclamations when he was a young doctor; he told her so. She laid her head back, and wondered how he would see her now.

"Perfectly respectful," he replied. "Everything I could want in a wife."

Content with his words, Caroline Maddox closed her eyes for the final time.

... To Be Continued


	60. Jane Bingley

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

We've reached the final segment, which is six chapters long, followed by an alternate ending. Warning: this chapters are sad, but inevitable. I hope you've enjoyed the story until this point, and will follow me to the very end of our series.

Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in stores and on Amazon.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Jane Bingley

Jane had a purple sari – a complex Indian outfit in the form of drapes – that was Charles' favorite. He purchased it for her on their trip to India, long after the height of her beauty, but he insisted she was still the angel he married, and she knew better than to contradict him. That was an uphill argument. It was free-flowing, like the Empire gowns she used to wear, before corsets and whalebone returned to choke her and the rest of the feminine populace of Britain. She understood for the first time why Charles delayed taking off his soft Indian bedclothes as long as possible in the morning, and stopped chiding him for it, something she had never been very good at in the first place. It became her favorite outfit, even though she chose that only he should see her in it. Maybe that was what made it even more special. Maybe there was some truth to what Nadezhda Maddox believed about saving something for her husband beyond the physical act, and covering her hair all her life, even after Brian's death. She simply changed the scarf to a black one.

Jane was familiar with jet by that time. She buried a mother, a father, and then three of her four sisters. Losing Caroline was like losing a sister, hitting her just as hard. Even if she was not in bombazine for a sister-in-law, her world was darkened that day.

Still, there was so much light and color in her world, even when she reached the age where death surrounded and awaited her. Charles toiled endlessly in the greenhouse with his grandson, watering the Indian and British plants for the next season, the next birth, the next wedding. There was always some event that needed more color and had to be planned for, in his opinion. As life took from them, it gave. Edmund and Julia had a son and two girls. Georgiana ended her motherhood with seven children surviving to adulthood. Eliza had two boys and two girls, the latter two twins. And then there was her son Charles, who forfeited his inheritance by not marrying or producing children. That choice was as unfathomable to her as a man entering a convent, but she remembered there was a time when she was the oldest of five unmarried sisters, and though her looks were considered the best by everyone's standards but her own, she was only aging and faced the possibility of spinsterhood for lack of opportunities. Though unimaginable now, with all of them married (Lydia twice), she had wondered what her life would be like, alone and living off someone else's charity.

But her oldest son was not alone. She knew that. He had a life in France, he had a lover, and he no doubt had friends. Her only sadness was with the fact that when he died, his brightness would not carry on in a son or daughter. His legacy would be only the life he lived on earth and how he was remembered, and he was loved by everyone. Well, not so bad. Considering his lifestyle, he could have done much worse, but her husband's kindness made everything possible, even the impossible.

Her husband would be flustered, and not in the adorable way, to encounter something he could not make disappear, either by himself or through his many friends, relatives, and contacts. So she did not tell him that while in London, she saw a doctor George had recommended for the lump in her bosom. He recommended burning it out, and she consulted with George, who had a different opinion. Shaking her head, she did tell Charles, then calmly and patiently waited for him to stop bouncing around like a madman and recover from his panic, and see the matter clearly. There was a specialist in Vienna; they would go there. Their eldest son joined them when they arrived on the Continent, and helped pass the intolerable wait for the operation. He served as much good just calming down his father as actually supporting her in her suffering afterward. She was disfigured, deformed, and she could not wear her sari in all honesty, without a pad to make her look normal. But these were her own worries; her husband insisted he would rather her alive and a headless zombie than dead of the cancer. She commented that she did not like the image, but she knew he was trying to be kind.

It was not a secret in the family why the Bingleys disappeared to Europe for several months, but few said anything other than to comment on how pleasant it was to see her returned upon her arrival, and she did not have to suffer that indignity. She returned to her life as if a part of her was not broken, and after a time she felt as though it was not, and had always been that way, until the pain appeared on her other side, not this time from a visible source. There were many consultations and one operation in a hospital in Scotland, but to no avail. The cancer was too deep and hidden; they were risking her life when they cut. She returned to Derbyshire, still weak from the operation but wishing to be home as soon as possible.

It seemed especially cruel to Lizzy, only a year after losing her husband. Though Elizabeth Darcy bore her widowhood with strength, and did not suffer the fate of so many by being kicked out by her son (who would never dream of such a thing) and sent to live in a dowager home, she was still alone, and now she would be even more so.

"You have too much health to die so soon," Elizabeth said, ridiculing the doctor's sentence of a few months. Jane lived another year, the pain intermittent but with breaks. Charles delighted in showing her how to smoke a hookah with opium, however unladylike it might be for her to do it. The light feeling resembled, at least in her memory, the feeling of lying beside her husband in the first days of her marriage, knowing only bliss and thinking nothing of the world around them, which could not possibly be as wonderful as the world they shared together.

Now she could see that world expanded, to her children and grandchildren and now great-grandchildren. She still had Charles, with all the boyish charm of their wedding day, but she had so much more. She did not want to leave that behind. There was nothing in the next life she could imagine that was not already in this one. Perhaps that was why she accepted any treatment, no matter how painful, or passed the afternoons in the Indian room, doped with her husband. Or in the sun, rumored to be so bad for her skin, sitting on the terrace soaking in it with Lizzy. Where in her childhood she would spend hours picking flowers with her sister, now she was content to simply watch them grow.

"I remember our walks," she said to her husband as he held her in his arms on the oversized cushion in the Indian room. "In the garden at Longbourn. Do you?"

He giggled, possibly because of the opium. "Of course."

"It was such an ill-nurtured garden. We tried our best, all of us, and could make nothing grow properly. Lady Catherine was right to call it small and whatever else Lizzy may have called it. Yet I recall it fondly. Why did we spend so much time in it?"

He kissed her neck. "I recall a certain bush that was particularly tall, and the bench behind it provided an adequate hiding space from the window to your father's study."

"Ah yes. That was it."

Such fleeting moments, so important at the time. She looked forward to them all day, when they thought holding hands was so scandalous even between a betrothed couple, and it felt as though it was, and made it all the more exciting. They were so young and innocent, ignorant of the challenges life would force upon them and the opportunities it would offer them. Nothing mattered but each other.

"I remember it," Jane said. She remembered herself young, and in love, walking apart from her doe-eyed, red-haired suitor, so dashing in his blue coat, and perpetually destroying whatever hat he was supposed to be wearing by tearing it up in his hands. He could never find a use for them, except to hold her own, and they could only do that in the garden, or if they managed to lose their chaperone on the walk to Meryton.

"You are as beautiful as the day I met you," Charles said, taking her hand now. It made her nervous, even though the fern was so tall, Papa couldn't possibly see them. "The day I fell in love with you."

"They are the same day."

"The very same." He was never so sure of anything as when he talked about her. "I do not yet know of a day I can find to match it."

She squeezed his hand behind the ugly, overgrown bush, in the only decent place in their garden. "We will have to make that day."

"Swear you will never leave me."

She chided him. "When I am old and gray, you will not want me."

"You are wrong."

He did want her, until her very final hour, and held her as he sobbed in their Indian room, in their home, in the world they had made for themselves.

... To Be Continued


	61. Elizabeth Darcy

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

We've reached the final segment, which is six chapters long, followed by an alternate ending. Warning: these chapters are sad, but inevitable. I hope you've enjoyed the story until this point, and will follow me to the very end of our series.

Book 3 - "Mr. Darcy's Great Escape" (the book version of the story "Left to Follow) is now available in stores and on Amazon.

And now, back to our story:

* * *

Elizabeth Darcy

Charles Bingley, in a black suit and a black band, returned to the house after the funeral, to comfort his sister-in-law and for her to comfort him. But as she rose to greet him, worn out from her sobbing, he stood in the doorway, a sad smile on his face. "And then there were two."

It was so very painful to stay alive. There was so much happiness in the world around her, but so many empty spaces. She no longer sat at the end of the table at Pemberley, opposite from the head. That was Georgiana's spot, as mistress of Pemberley. Elizabeth bore her no ill-will for the usurpation. If anything, she was relieved to not have to face her son sitting where her husband once sat.

It was not particularly proper for her to cry in Charles Bingley's arms, but she did so, before her son and daughters came to comfort her and his children to comfort him. Only he could understand her pain, two souls thrown together by a treacherous sea, if only for a brief moment. Then they could return to their lives, and try to bask in the relief that Jane was no longer suffering, that life still had so much to offer them. But he was right. What had been their world – the crowded offices awaiting the births of children, the after dinner parties – had grown laboriously small. It was hard to keep up appearances that this did not trouble them, that they knew they were observers to someone else's stage.

Lady Georgiana Kincaid survived another two years, very merry until the end despite the deaths of her husband and brother, the two most important people in her life. Elizabeth, a close second, was there with her when her tiny heart failed. She held onto her hand until the doctor thoroughly assured her that this person so full of life not two hours before was now dead, gone from her ranks to join the ones she missed so much. She cried out for Darcy, and maybe he came, and took her away. Elizabeth liked to imagine that was what had happened, and she was simply not privy to it. She also liked the idea that Darcy had been in the room with them and taken Elizabeth's place. The sweet little girl, now a kind old woman, was gone.

Her children came down quickly for the funeral, already knowing that she wished to be buried at Pemberley and not in Scotland. It was no slight to her husband; his own will stipulated that she be buried where she pleased with no complaints from his children. The funeral had to wait for Grégoire, who was held up by weather. Georgiana's children were Presbyterian and he could not perform the service, but he could be pallbearer, though admittedly there were plenty of others to carry the actual weight of her coffin. They brought in a bagpiper, in full regalia, and Elizabeth supposed she might have heard the pipes from the next county, much less anywhere in Pemberley.

Grégoire and Patrick returned from the service, and all of Derbyshire seemed to line up to see the little monk who was Georgiana and old man Darcy's brother. He accepted their condolences with his usual forbearance, but Elizabeth could see he was tired, and not from his health or any requirements of his job. He had buried two brothers and a sister – less siblings than Elizabeth, but the only people he had in the world of his own blood. The world that Geoffrey Darcy senior, father of Fitzwilliam Darcy, had created in his marriage and in his infidelities was coming to an end. And yet, the world they created would live on. Even the monk managed to produce a child.

"How are you?" Elizabeth inquired, knowing what he would say and wondering what he would mean. "Are you well?"

"Well enough to continue teaching for a bit longer. They have not managed to be rid of me yet." He smiled, showing more of a youthful charm like Georgiana than the serious Darcy.

"There is no retirement for monks, is there?"

"They do not put us out to pasture, no, but if I was in a community, it would care for me. Instead, the other priests who work in the parish do. There are quite a number of them."

"Pa was offered a bishopric," Patrick said. "'course he didne' accept."

"That would have been more work, not less," Grégoire said. "I wish to see the saint before I leave."

With the ground still fresh on Georgiana's grave, they returned the next day to the graveyard, so Grégoire could pray at the grave of St. Sebald, patron saint of Bavaria. Authorities still believed he was in Munich. "He comes to me, speaks to me," he said, and added, "in my _dreams_. I'm not a madman, though I am familiar with the label."

"What does he say?"

"It is not so much what he says but his very presence. He is not a young man, but nor is he so old. He is very comforting about the idea that I am his elder and his protector. He also says not to make too much of myself."

"I don't think that has ever been a problem, Grégoire," Elizabeth said.

He had trouble rising off his knees, but Patrick was there to help him. "I used to dream of an anvil – I was on it, and the saints were hammering away at me. This nightmare ended when I married Caitlin," Grégoire said. What propelled him to say it, Elizabeth did not know, but nor would she quiet a grieving man. "On the anvil, the blacksmith makes you stronger. It was not like being beaten, designed to humiliate you or make you weaker, even though the physical sensation was the same. I begged G-d for mercy and He showed it. I begged G-d for forgiveness and He offered it. I prayed for a path and He lit my way. So merciful is G-d that I cannot but think the best of Georgiana's soul in the Kingdom of Heaven with Darcy and Wickham."

Elizabeth took it as little surprise when Grégoire died a mere three months later, passing in his sleep and being discovered when he did not rise for Vigils. According to the other monks – he now had two under him – he was always the first one awake and despite their youth, he was kicking them out of their beds for prayer. When they both overslept, and discovered their mattresses undisturbed, they knew he was gone. They washed his body and informed Patrick. Despite all his hemming and hawing about glorious Ireland, Patrick was more than ready to respect his father's wishes, and bury him beside his brother and sister in England.

Derbyshire had never seen such a procession. By their estimation, half of Dublin made the journey with the body of Father Grégoire to be buried in the mysterious rich Englishman's estate. The hill was filled with smoke from white-robed priests swinging the host while a confused and fascinated tenant populace watched on. The Archbishop of Dublin conducted the long service in Latin. Elizabeth was surprised to learn that by Catholic traditions, she could attend. It was her first funeral, and Geoffrey and Bingley stood protectively on her sides, as if to protect her from the pass of worshipful priests, eager to kiss the coffin before it went into the ground.

Since Grégoire had no possessions that did not belong to the church, his will only contained his final wishes concerning his body. Most of his original writing belonged to Patrick, who told the Archbishop he was not quite ready to let go of it, but would consider the option in the future. Elizabeth sat in the drawing room with the Archbishop of Dublin (minus miter) and Patrick, and knew that day would never come. Patrick was unusually possessive of his father's items when it came to the church.

When the procession was gone, and Patrick left to mourn with his family, he presented Elizabeth with several bound, sealed books that looked like journals.

"Me Pa kept personal things," he said, "things he never wanted anybody to see, even me. Even after I die, I don' wan' everyone goin' after them if they're declaring him a saint." Then, without hesitation, he broke the seal on the first one. Most of the pages were blank, except for a single scribbled word in Latin or what Patrick identified as Greek. "Aye, I remember this, from when he had the fever. He said he could never make sense of it." He closed it, and reattached the seal with the Darcy seal.

The next two were journals. The first one had several pages cut into to make room for a small, thin wooden portraiture of a boy.

"This is him," Elizabeth said, recognizing it instantly. "His father kept a picture of him after visiting him. It was from the only time they met. He kept it at the old d'Arcy mansion in Valgones, and when we discovered it, we gave it to him. But he wouldn't take it then – Darcy must have given it to him after he settled down in Ireland." The feel of the wood was familiar, and even with her spectacles, she could barely make out the _Grégoire Bellamont_ handwriting on the back. "Your grandfather loved him very much."

"Did you know my grandfather?"

"No. He died before I met my husband. Darcy always spoke of him highly. He did not even realize he was just a man until he discovered Grégoire. He held him on such a pedestal. But Darcy accepted your father right away – faster than even I expected him to. Faced with his father's infidelity with a servant, he still cared for him from the very start." She replaced the portraiture, not knowing what else to do with it, and squinted, but she could not read the inscription on the inside of the leather cover, and called Geoffrey to do it.

"'Upon my death, this account of parts of my life which I can remember with some certainly is to go to whomever dares stare into a soul. I hope you will judge it kindly. The first two volumes are my life. The last volume bundled in this package contains notes I scribbled but have never attempted to decipher for fear of destroying my corporeal form.'"

"'In the spring of 18__, I fell ill while carving in the chapel, and am told that my fever lasted five days. I do not recall anything in the real world from this time, but I am told I wrote this immediately after I woke. I spent the days dreaming of an ascent to heaven, guarded by three hundred and twenty gates, and as I rose, St. Patrick and St. Sebald spoke the words to open each gate. I suspect that the passwords are in the book. When we reached the top, I became aware of the nature of my ascent, and refused to go on, rejecting the Kingdom of Heaven for my unfinished life on earth. I do not recommend trying it, and in fact would have destroyed the book myself, had I had the courage to do so. But I cannot let knowledge pass out of the world that was so painfully inserted into it. Do with it as you wish, and if you find yourself in a feverish journey through the three hundred and twenty gates leading to heaven, be sure to bring it with you. Or, as my brother would say, it may all be nonsense.'"

Elizabeth smiled despite herself. "It is something Darcy would say."

"Keep it here, then, at Pemberley. If Pa wanted the church ta have it, he would have given it to them." Patrick closed the book and caressed the cover, tears welling up in his eyes. "At least we know 'e can _get_ ta heaven, even if he 'as to break in."

* * *

Elizabeth was present, but watched from afar as the smooth transition was made from generation to generation, as she stepped back and let Georgiana be unofficial mistress of Pemberley. Bingley was still master of Kirkland, but Edmund was running it, and the seat at the table across from Bingley remained open. Bingley personally paid for Derbyshire's first telegraph station, so amused as he was by the concept of an instantaneous message from London. Elizabeth saw more great-grandchildren than she ever expected to see, so much that she sometimes stumbled to remember their names. Watching them play in the grass on a sunny afternoon, she imagined they were her daughters before she caught herself. Entire novel passages Darcy loved to read to her she still knew by heart, but there were so many little ones about, and so little time.

Even with the changing of the guard at Pemberley, she remained in the quarters of the mistress, and Geoffrey and Georgie stayed where they were. She slept in the same bed she shared with her husband for more than fifty years, rose to the same sunrise through the window, and was dressed standing on the same box, before the same mirrors. Though the notable absence of her husband plagued her, she could not imagine another life. Not in this one, anyway. If the Japanese were right and one moved from one life to the next, she would settle for a new bed. In this one, she would lay between the same sheets she shared with Darcy and even though they were clean, she would huge the pillow and imagine the smell to be his scent. Now her companion was Knut, the never-fully-trained but completely obedient mutt Darcy and Bingley had taken a shine to, and he to them. At times he seemed as sad as she was, but was quicker to demand her recovery from the funk by barking incessantly when she stayed too long in bed. Geoffrey offered to forbid the dog from the house, but she refused.

In her final years, a rough-and-tumble American joined their family. Michael Walker had served two years in the Federal Army, lying about his age to fight in his country's civil war. After being wounded and abandoned by his unit in a battle that ended in a massacre, he spent months limping his way home across enemy lines and to Philadelphia, to find his father had been informed he was dead. Not wanting to be hanged as a deserter, his father helped him flee to England, taking up on Georgie's offer of an open house to the young man she met as a child in Japan. His personality was jarring, not of a refined Englishman or an angry Irishman. He was, however, very polite to his hosts, even if at first he didn't know how to be, and he worshipped the ground Georgiana walked on. She converted the old fencing court to a Japanese fighting school and forbid everyone else to it.

"She believes he's Mugen's reincarnation," Geoffrey explained to his mother.

"What does he believe?"

"She's never told him about reincarnation, so nothing, I suppose."

"Then how does he know?"

Geoffrey gave her the same shrug he gave everyone when asked to explain one of his wife's eccentricities. Michael was deeply scarred from his war experiences, both physically and mentally, and he needed the quiet of the English countryside to recover. Georgie treated him as her own and Geoffrey extended him every courtesy, though Elizabeth was sure she heard Darcy in her son when Geoffrey was making an off-handed comment about Michael's manners. There was some question of whether he would marry one of their daughters or Bingley's granddaughters, as it seemed such a likely thing with their proximity, but he regarded them all as somewhere between family and another species, and never appeared to consider the option.

"There's more to life than getting married," he said as she passed by on her way to the garden. He was whittling something, and did not even look at her. He must have heard an earlier conversation and was picking now to comment on it.

She could not help but be amused. "You were never a young woman in England."

"Darcy-sensei was." That was what he called Georgie.

"She was a very ... strange young woman in England, with a large enough inheritance to have her pick, even if she didn't look far. I think she chose my son when she was three and he her. We are not all so lucky."

"Wolves mate for life," he said, which struck her as an odd thing to say, because Georgie's various costume antics of youth were _never_ mentioned in Derbyshire, except in tavern legends never connected to her. Then again, Michael had a habit of saying strange things.

"Then I am a wolf, I suppose, if I exclusively use that definition."

He looked up at her just as she was about to leave. "Was your marriage arranged?"

"Hardly, though it was to my great advantage. In fact, I refused Mr. Darcy's first offer."

"Why?" He sounded genuinely interested.

"Because we misunderstood each other."

"Then why did he propose?"

She could only have one answer to that. "Because he loved me."

"But you hated him?"

Elizabeth decided there was no reason to keep standing, if he was so interested. It was hard to tell, but she sat on the bench anyway, as hard as it would be to rise from it again. "Hate is a very strong word."

"What's wrong with a strong word for a strong feeling? Hate is a very strong feeling."

"I did not hate him," Elizabeth said. "I just did not love him. And I was deceived into disliking him. He was so shocked at my accusations that he refused to correct them, however wrong some of them may have been, and stormed out."

"And this was the man in love with you."

"Yes."

"You have a lot of patience."

"So did he." Darcy tolerated her misunderstanding, in as much as he went through great, if awkward lengths to correct his mistakes. And when he proposed again, he was all nervous apologies. "It took us a great deal of time to truly know each other, perhaps a great deal more than it should have taken, but once we did, it was not something that could be unlearned or forgotten. He loved me the same on his dying day as he did on his wedding day, and so did I. So you might say, there could be more to life than marriage, but I would be hard-pressed to find something that could match it."

He grinned, and handed her his finished work. It had been a stick, but it was whittled down to a little dog, just like Knut. Before she had a chance to thank him, he stood and walked away.

* * *

After the conversation with Michael, Elizabeth's thoughts turned more than ever to the earliest days of her life with Darcy, from the very first assembly where he was so rude to his boyish attempts to convince her to befriend his sister – a move, in post, clearly meant to further his own relationship with her, something he saw no other method of achieving. She knew it was bad to dwell on the past. A stroll through memory lane was pleasant, but one did run miles down it. Yet the subject came up again and again, and she found herself telling her grandchildren and even her children stories from her childhood and days as an unmarried woman that she had never told them, for one reason or another. There were even a few Bingley didn't know and was amused to learn.

To go back there, even for a short while ... It was so tempting, and so impossible. In her memories, brightness and color filled the days. Meanwhile, the world around her looked old and gray. She went searching for color, taking longer walks than she had not taken in years. When not expressing concern for her health, her children marveled at her energy.

"You are running away, not towards," Darcy said to her.

"I do not know how to find you," she cried. "I am lost."

"You know these woods too well to be lost," he assured her. "Be well, Lizzy. I will see you soon."

_How long?_ She begged, but the words did not come out, and he was gone. Yet she lived. Too many years of not overeating, indulging in too many spirits, or staying up late. She was nearly blind and deaf, but glasses and an ear horn fixed that, and she was the picture of health.

"Elizabeth?" it was Bingley, not Darcy's voice.

"Mother, come back to us."

She did not want to. But what kind of woman was she, not to fight death. She opened her eyes, now remembering falling ill after one of her walks in the light rain. She was alone in her bed, however many people were surrounding her. The bed belonged to both of them, her and Darcy, and he was absent.

George Wickham put his hand on her forehead. He could only be looking for a fever. "How do you feel?"

Was there a way to sum up a life's worth of feelings? To express her loneliness, to say how little even their love seemed to offer her now? No, of course not. "A bit hot," was her very mundane answer.

"She still has a fever."

"Can you give her anything?"

"For a fever? No. Nothing beyond what we've already been doing."

In moments of illness, she looked to Jane, but Jane wasn't there. "Am I to spend my waking moments listening to other people talk over me?"

"Of course not, Elizabeth," Bingley said. "We've just been very worried about you. Geoffrey especially. He's been driving George mad."

"As long as they don't fight."

"You know they never do." He smiled at her, and his smile said he understood, on a deeper level than a worried child ever could. "They're good children. Like brothers."

"Yes. Very much so. I love them," she said. "I love them all."

"I know," Bingley said.

The conversation continued without her, and maybe Bingley even tried to engage her, but she was too tired for their words and eager for the comfort sleep would provide her. That sleep, more peaceful than any in her life, proved very long indeed.

"You cannot hide from me, Elizabeth Bennet," Darcy said.

"No," she answered, "and it was never my intention to do so."

... To Be Continued


	62. Charles Bingley

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

Author's notes: Here we are, at the end of a long journey that began with me being way out of depth writing historical fiction and ending pretty much the same way. I like circles, at least in fiction, which is why I already knew long before I wrote this chapter that this story would end with Bingley, because it started with Bingley, almost four years ago exactly (3/11/06 was the first posting date). Have I really been incessantly posting for four years of my life? Have you guys really been reading for four years of your lives?

What am I going to do now?

The next chapter provides an alternate ending to the series, and is the official "last post" so I might have more to say then. Right now I'm just ... overwhelmed.

* * *

(Charles Bingley)

Not for the first time in many years, the shooting season began and Charles Bingley took little notice of it. He had to hear the shots himself, of William Darcy and Charles Bingley (son of Edmund) on the hunt, to recognize the season for what it was. His attention was elsewhere. Unknown forces pulled him towards his greenhouse, where he could wile away the hours planting new life and nurturing it as it grew, away from all of the abominable people who saw only the old man and not someone who could still create life.

_This must have been how Darcy felt when he gave up his ledgers_, he mused, and smiled at Darcy's expense not for the first time, but for the first time in awhile. He was so busy, with those visiting him, offering their condolences for the death of Mrs. Darcy, to whom they knew he was a close friend. He had married her sister, and his best friend was her husband. He returned from Elizabeth's funeral to see Knut waiting for him. "And then there was one."

Kirkland was still his estate even if Edmund was running it, and he had the right to all the privacy he wanted. Though normally inclined to spend it with his children and grandchildren, there were solitary pursuits that he found so engaging, not all as old-fashioned as gardening. The telegraph, the new lights, even the new plumbing fascinated him beyond a measure the installer found reasonable. He sent a telegraph to his son Charles, which reached Paris, and Charles responded with a lovely message that was an awfully polite warning about how much such a thing cost. Life was full of surprises, if his sodomite son living the high life in France was lecturing him about fiscal responsibility.

As for his other son, he had a great deal of responsibility, and Bingley was willing to help, especially when it came to dealing with documents in foreign languages. That ability never abandoned him long after he couldn't name half the people in the parish church. Edmund had gotten his way with numbers from him, and he could still balance a checkbook even when those responsibilities were long gone and the Bingley holdings far more complex than anything even his father, the man who built the Bingley name, could have imagined. His handwriting still wasn't very good, and never had been, but now he had the convenient excuse of a withered, shaking hand, to which Edmund knowingly rolled his eyes but did not challenge the explanation.

Otherwise, he was busy with guests – he was master of Kirkland and that was one duty that he would be humiliated to be removed from. He received visitors, even if they had to go to greet him instead of the other way around, and he never turned away a relative, however distant or how tired he was that day. But though they filled hours, there were moments where he thought _I need Darcy_ for this or _I wonder what Darcy would say_. To say nothing of how often he thought of Jane, long after she was gone, the pain of her final years all but forgotten when it paled in comparison to their happy life together. There were still stray times when he would give anything to have Darcy in the room, even to ask a simple question and have a simple answer. He would settle for Elizabeth – not to say Elizabeth was settling – but she was gone now too, either to join the Heavenly Procession or become one with the Brahma or be reborn in the body of another child, placed based on the karma she built up in her previous life. Bingley could not decide which, and he had no confidant with which to pose the question.

There was one person who was surer than the rest, at least in something other than what the Vicar offered, and she gracefully received him with a kiss on the cheek, surprised at his sudden appearance.

"When I die, do you think I will have a choice, to be reborn or to join Jane in Heaven? I cannot imagine why I would choose rebirth if the latter was an option. There is a flaw in this logic I cannot make out."

"The Buddha teaches that people are reborn to gain enough karma to attain Enlightenment and escape the wheel of life," Georgie said. "If given a choice, a very high honor, the person comes back as a bodhisattva, to relieve the suffering of those who remain in the world with their compassion."

"There must not be many bodhisattvas."

She winked at him. "I suppose that is why their monks go to such great lengths to find them when they are reborn so far away from their homeland."

"If you are right – "

"I never said anything, Papa. I just repeated the Buddha's words. Heresy, all of it."

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, of course. But if the Buddha is right, and I am given a choice, I must disappoint and join your mother in Heaven."

"You are already decided. It may look different on the other side." She ran her Buddhist rosary through her fingers, a rather constant habit she tried not to do in front of mixed audiences. "Mugen admitted to me that he didn't know what it would be before he died, but if it was to stay with his lover, he would stay. And if there was some way he could come back, and part of him stay with Miyoshi, then he would come back to me."

"And you believe he came back to you."

She eyed him seriously. "Please don't tell him that."

"My lips are sealed. And you have your answer – the soul can split, somehow."

"Or he didn't join Miyoshi. Or I'm wrong entirely, about all of this, and Michael is just someone of a similar temperament, thrown into my life by chance and kept there by faith in something larger than myself. The Vicar does do such a good job of reminding us of our heavenly rewards if we act like good Christians, and what awaits us if we do not. It makes right and wrong very easy – none of this complicated karma nonsense."

"Then I am a sinner, for even considering this heathen nonsense."

She laughed. "Then perhaps you should repent."

"And do you have a recommendation for how to do that, Rinpoché?"

Georgie raised her eyebrows at the title but only said, "Start writing down your sins. And some good things, to keep a good mix for the L-rd in Heaven."

"I must be fair and balanced," he said, and kissed his daughter on the head before departing. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the bench where he used to sit with Darcy, Knut by his side, watching his great-grandchildren play a very simplified form of cricket.

The heat exhausted him, and he returned to his quarters for a cool bath. Relaxed, he dressed in his orange kurta and drew a blank sheet. Ink dribbled from his pen to the paper as his mind was as blank as the sheet. Where should he start? With his childhood? Surely those sins were long forgotten, those lessons learned.

There was one moment he could say his current life started, and it was not his birth. It was when he saw Jane Bennet enter the Meryton Assembly. But first, how he got there. He ordered the window open, so he could hear the sounds of the children playing as he set his pen to paper and, in a more deliberate and possibly legible script, began to write.

_My mother, in her infinite wisdom, imported to me a message before her passing that remained with me for the years of my late childhood and early adulthood, before I entered the sanctimony of marriage. 'Charles, you will do well to remember what parents with an unwed daughter universally believes: that a single man of a good fortune _must_ be in want of a wife.'_

The End

... (Up Next - "Or it could have happened this way...")


	63. The Very Last of the Wine

**The Last of the Wine  
**

by DJ Clawson

_Author's Final Note_: This is truly the last of the wine.

The title, by the way, is derived from the novel The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault, about the destruction of Alexander the Great's empire after his death. I was reading it when I had to name this story and I liked it, and it's not a lot more complicated than that.

So let's talk about **Brandy** and how awesome she is. Seriously. She's edited every book in this series, sometimes multiple times. Brandy offered to start editing for me during _Left to Follow_, and did every story after that, chapter by chapter, then went _back_ and did the first stories when I was editing them for publication. Words can't really express how much I owe to Brandy. I mean, they can. A lot is how much, but simply saying "a lot" doesn't cover the scope of it on an emotional level. If you have read my story for years or just started yesterday and you want to post a final comment and you have absolutely nothing to say to me, at least thank Brandy.

Some of you have asked **what I'm up to now**. My professional career as a writer is moving forward, albeit slowly, because that's how publishing works. I'm currently pitching the rest of the books to Sourcebooks, all of which would require some amount of revision for historical accuracy and for general taste, as I think I made a few mistakes along the way that could be cleared up in revision, but if they do, G-d Willing, get published, they should be pretty similar to what you've read. I'm also hoping to have another novel, Aristotle Vampire, sent out to publishers by my agent sometime this spring, depending on what she thinks of my latest revision. Unlike the world of self-publishing, in traditional publishing you have to create a publishable novel and then find an editor who cares enough about it to convince the publisher to spend a lot of money acquiring and publishing it, which is not very easy but totally worth it ify ou can manage it. I don't have any plans to write anymore Regency fiction, though I'm always surprising myself. If you have any further questions, or want to follow the series as it (hopefully) continues into the publication sphere, watch my forums. I also have a Marsha Altman author blog at the web page for the series, MarshaAltman dot com, which is the best way to get in contact with me other than leaving a comment here.

Finally, **I want to think all of you**, because this couldn't have happened without you. I definitely would not have written more than one story without a flood of people cheering me on all these years, or had the courage to put the first stories out for publication, or had the stamina to finish the series (the final book, if it makes it to publication, will probably be around 700 pages long if published as is). Over the years a lot of people have told me to stop writing fan fiction and start writing "my own stuff" and I've always ignored them, because I write what I want to write, but because of your unwavering support, this is one of the few cases where fan fiction turned into something that started my publishing career. I've always been a writer, but it was my lifelong dream to become a published author, and that dream was fulfilled when _The Darcys and the Bingleys_ was published. I owe some of it, or possibly all of it, to you guys, so thanks for all the comments, support, questions, and corrections that steered me through 11 stories.

And now, as promised, dinosaurs.

* * *

Or it could have happened this way.... (Alternate Ending)

**The Last of the Wine**

Mr. Bennet, not having died in the previous story, gathered the entire family together in the Pemberley library, his favorite place to gather people.

"I suppose you've been wondering why I have carried this staff with the crystallized gelatinous blob on the end of it all of these years."

"Yes, Papa," the Bennet sisters said, even though it was a lie. Their father was just odd.

"You may not have noticed that inside this crystal, which was made from hardened sap, though not the kind you find in a romance novel, is a small mosquito. And inside that mosquito is dinosaur blood."

"Dinosaur blood!"

"Shocking!"

"I don't know what that is!"

He continued anyway, "And after many years, I've managed to extract it, and by improbable means, replicate it into several small creatures which were fed the proper English way, on very tasteless cattle and sheep, though perhaps in a rawer state than you would yourselves prefer."

"My goodness!"

"That's where my sheep went."

"Seriously, I do not know what a dinosaur is!"

Mr. Bennet was too excited to be stopped by any commotion. "And, as you can imagine, my intention is to open a park, if you will, to view these small – well, increasingly large – creatures. I meant to do it at Longbourn, of course, but it simply lacks the facilities to house these dinosaurs – all of which, I assure you, seemed much smaller when they were born than they currently are."

"Here? At Pemberley?"

"We can barely keep track of the cattle."

"I'm just going to point out that dinosaurs haven't been discovered yet, thank you!"

"Anyway, I think it should all go fabulously, provided none of them escape, as for some reason I did not check to see if they were the carnivorous kind or the herbivore kind before I let them grow to adulthood." Mr. Bennet paused as a servant rushed up and whispered in his ear. "Well, they've escaped. Let me reiterate what a pleasure it's been knowing you all these years, especially my son-in-law who put me up in this lovely library which is now about to get torn to shreds."

"Torn to shreds?"

"That depends if velociraptors think books are meat-based or not. How should they know? They've never encountered books before. Mr. Darcy, you should really be more accommodating to the sensibilities of ancient – "

At which point, a so-called velociraptor leapt through the window and wolfed down Mr. Bennet, carrying his remains off to its lair or, if it didn't have one, somewhere where it could eat an old man in peace, without all kinds of people shouting in horror and running in different directions.

Geoffrey carried Alison as he found Georgie on the stairs. "What are we going to do?"

"Well, a child has to be imperiled and then escape, so that's out of the way," Georgie said practically.

"No, I mean about the dinosaurs! Because there's two at the bottom of the stairs. Can't you use your Chinese magic powers on them?"

"Don't you know that dinosaurs aren't affected by magic? And I thought we agreed not to call it magic! You sound racist."

"How is that racist? Seriously, how does that have anything to do – " But he didn't make it through the end of the sentence before the T-Rex that was actually coming up from behind them grabbed him and ate him up in a few bites. Unfortunately Asian-specific magic powers did not work on dinosaurs, and Georgiana soon followed, but Alison escaped after briefly being imperiled.

Meanwhile, Bingley and Jane made it as far as the greenhouse, which Pemberley totally has, just because I didn't mention it in any previous stories. "Thank goodness we escaped!" Bingley said. "Sorry about your sisters and all the secondary characters. That was fast."

"There were a lot of dinosaurs. How did my father hide them all these years? Surely we would have noticed several distinct breeds of giant, reptilian-like creatures in Mr. Darcy's backyard?"

"He put them in wolf costumes, obviously, and we just take lots of wolves around for granted, despite this being England, where wolves are extinct," Bingley guessed. "But we made it, which is what is important. Hopefully I can scare them off with my Hindi or the smell of curry or something to that affect, and stall them while you escape."

"Oh, Charles! I can't possibly live without you!" Jane fell into his arms."

"Me neither, my love. I will love you forever."

"And ever."

And had they been Elizabeth and Darcy, and much younger, a prolonged and, frankly, far too descriptive love scene would have started and not ended for fifty pages, but unfortunately they were not, and while embracing each other they were set upon by a hoard of those little dinosaurs that look harmless and are supposed to eat waste, but when there's like 10 of them you know you're in trouble, you know the ones. Compsognathus.

At long last, Darcy and Elizabeth found shelter in the kitchens, where things were made of stern stuff like tile and metal. Darcy firmly shut the door and they hid behind the center island.

"At last, we're safe," Darcy said. "They can't possibly know how to operate door knobs."

"Of course not, my love," Elizabeth said. "But what of the others?"

"I think it's down to us now, thanks to your crazy father. Clearly if he was a man of ten thousand a year and not three thousand a year, he would have known that it's not very gentlemanly to recreate a race of creatures through ethically questionable means."

"Oh, don't start! This has nothing to do with money, though it does explain where my inheritance went. Oh no, the door!"

They both watched in horror as the dinosaur on the other end banged against the door, but without success. It was a very heavy door.

"See? We're safe," Darcy tried to assure her. "Oh no!" The door handle began to turn. "They've figured out how to open doors! We're doomed, my love."

"I will love you forever, Fitzwilliam Darcy."

"And I you, Elizabeth Darcy."

At which point, trying to avoid a torrid sex scene, the two velociraptors gobbled them up.

Thus ends the greatest love story ever told.

Finis

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_**It's over! You can go home now.**_


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